


Alpha vs Alpha

by Dangerously_Demonic



Series: The Guide to Murder [4]
Category: Jurassic Park - All Media Types, Jurassic World Trilogy (Movies)
Genre: Don't Stare At Raptors, Gen, MurderBby, Owen Likes Dangerous Animals, Raptor of Unusual Intelligence, Raptor of Unusual Size, The Tangled Web InGen Weaves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-01 02:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 27,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dangerously_Demonic/pseuds/Dangerously_Demonic
Summary: When Jurassic World brings in a new asset from Isla Sorna, Owen gets roped into being trainer for yet another raptor...One he suspects was an alpha on Sorna. While his Raptor Squad sees him as the undisputed alpha of the pack, this one is completely unimpressed with him and refuses to see him as such. This leads him to both think outside the box and quietly break the rules he adopted with his own raptors. Unusual raptors require unusual tactics, after all.The problem is, he's not sure which alpha will come out on top: him or the raptor.





	1. Introductions

**Author's Note:**

> Joey/Murder/Alpha's thoughts are somewhat disjointed on purpose.
> 
> Also Kaitlyn is a sassy bamf and I adore her.

Owen patiently waited in the breakroom. He’d never been to this particular enclosure and wasn’t entirely sure on what it contained. Though, the still lingering smell of paint in the breakroom made him think that it’d recently been built. Honestly, the whole complex reminded him very heavily of what his girls were kept in…Just bigger. He glanced at his watch and sighed, but then looked up when a young woman with blue hair stepped into the room; oddly enough, she carried a large, dead rabbit by the back legs in her left hand. She offered him a smile and shook his hand with her free hand.

“Hi, sorry. I got the DNA report from the Creation Lab today and I lost track of time while I was looking it over. We’ve met once or twice, I don’t kn—”

Owen nodded at her reasoning, not at all bothered but then interrupted her, “Kaitlyn, right? You’re one of the vets that works under Chuck.”

Chuck Jones had been the head vet for a number of the carnivores in the park. He not only had ensured that they were healthy, but also supervised their nutrition. Him and Owen had talked about the Raptor Squad over many beers. The man had been absolutely enthralled with the raptors and loved hearing about the newest silly thing they’d done as youngsters.

Unfortunately, the last Owen had heard, the man had been severely injured by a dinosaur and later passed away from the injuries. It was a shame, to be honest. Chuck had been one of the few people that Owen had met who offered the raptors the respect they deserved.

“I was.” Kaitlyn’s smile faltered at the mention of Chuck. “I…Was promoted after he passed away. I wish my promotion had been under better circumstances but…”

“I’d say ‘congratulations’, but…” He offered her a sympathetic look. “I’m really sorry to hear about him. I enjoyed talking to him about my girls.”

“And he loved hearing about them. He’d gush about them for days after watching you train them.” She sighed and glanced down at the rabbit she was holding before looking back to Owen. “Chuck was a good man and he died doing what he loved best. But, uh…That’s not why I e-mailed you. We have a new carivore at the park that was caught on Sorna and the higher ups think your experience with your raptors can help us.”

This caught Owen a bit off guard. “I’m flattered, but my experience is with raptors, not carnivores in general. Most of them are loners and my experience relies on a pack dynamic.”

Kaitlyn motioned for him to follow, “That’s the thing. This _is_ a raptor.”

“I was under the impression that Sorna didn’t have any more dinosaurs on it.”

“There’s small pockets of dinosaurs still left, but they’re slowly dying out because the populations are too small to sustain breeding. A lot of the older dinosaurs in the park came from Sorna, so the breeding populations were heavily affected.” The tone in her voice suggested that she wasn’t really a fan of this idea.

“I understand why they did that, but…Damn, that’s sad.” Owen frowned. There wasn’t much that could be done about it, unfortunately. “Alright…So, you’re wanting me to help with what, exactly?”

“They want you to humanize and train the raptor.” Kaitlyn replied as she opened the door that led to the catwalks.

“But why this raptor? We already have four of them.”

“No, we don’t. This one is a different species. Velociraptors are from the late Cretaceous period and hail from Mongolia; very fast and very smart. I’ve seen videos of you working with your girls and I’m honestly jealous that you get to work closely with such beautiful animals.” She finally stopped walking; the enclosure seemed empty. However, in places the dirt had been disturbed and there were a few blood-stained bones scattered around.

“Anyway. This is a Utahraptor from the early Cretaceous period and is from what would later become North America. There’s about a fifty-million-year difference between the two…Making him the bigger, older, pissier cousin of your girls.” Kaitlyn peered down into the enclosure, but didn’t see the raptor. He was likely hiding in the undergrowth and was already aware of their presence.

“…Utahraptor, and wait _him_?” He stared at Kaitlyn, not entirely sure what to think.

“That’s what the genetics lab said. We’re not really sure if there were others, and we’re not really sure how old he is…Just that he’s a mature male.”

“…Bigger cousin…Just how much bigger are we talking about?”

Rather than replying, Kaitlyn put two fingers to her mouth and whistled before chunking the rabbit over the railing, into the pen. It landed on the ground with a soft _thump_. Hopefully, he’d take the bait.

He’d seen the two humans from the moment they stepped onto the catwalks, their voices drifted down and allowed him to listen in on their conversation. It didn’t really tell him anything new, but his attention shifted to the sharp whistle and then the rabbit that had been thrown into the pen. He knew damn well it was to bait him out which initially caused him to balk, but at the same time, the idea of food sounded very appealing. It was still too soon for him to have memorized the feeding schedule and so he didn’t know when his next meal was.

Finally, he slinked out of the undergrowth to where the rabbit had fallen. There, he picked it up in his jaws and tossed it into the back of his mouth. While he would have preferred live prey, he couldn’t complain since most of his past meals on Sorna had involved rotting meat. Freshly dead meat that was cold was miles better than something rotting and with maggots. He cocked his head to the side and eyed the two humans.

When the raptor finally stepped out, she looked to Owen with a slight smug expression, “We’ve taken to calling him ‘Alpha’. You can change the name, if you want.”

“ _Holy shit._ Uh. Yeah. I think ‘Alpha’ is a pretty good name.” Owen stared down at the raptor as he slinked out of the undergrowth. The damn thing made his girls look tiny, and the coloration was absolutely something else…But as surprising as the raptor was, his attention was immediately drawn to something else: how ribby the raptor was. It immediately made him feel concerned about Alpha’s health. “…He’s thin.”

“Yeah. Between his appearance and how he eats, I’m thinking he hasn’t been getting enough food for a while.” At Owen’s questioning look, she sighed. “He pretty much just wolfs down his food as fast as he can and then guards it. I’m hoping he’ll calm down as he settles in. So, do you think you can train him?”

“I…Excuse my language but, are you fucking insane?” He looked over to Kaitlyn, incredulously. “My girls listen to me because they imprinted on me. I handled them as soon as I was given clearance. Hell, I was there when they _hatched_. That’s an adult and I’m guessing from the scars on his back, pretty high ranking, if not the alpha.”

“That’s how he got his name.” The scars on Alpha’s back had been one of the first things she’d noticed. While they were faded, they were still noticeably lighter than the rest of him.

Owen sighed and watched the raptor move off to stand under the shade of a tree. “Even with the work I’ve done with them, they’re still wild, Kaitlyn. I…” He sighed, still wrestling with the idea. “I don’t know if it’d be possible to humanize him, let alone train him. I mean…I can try…But…”

“…He’s the one who killed Chuck.” Kaitlyn finally said, quietly. The matters about the man’s death hadn’t really been talked about, which lead to a large amount of speculation among the various dinosaur handlers and vets.

“What happened, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Not at all. Don’t worry, I’m not mad at Alpha or anything. It’s a risk we take by working around these animals…Especially the predatory ones.” She leaned against the railing and rested her arms on top of it. “I…Was with the ACU guys that went to Sorna. They needed a vet, just in case anything went wrong with the capture…You know how animals can hurt themselves when they’re sedated. The whole thing was…Weird. I’m convinced Alpha _wanted_ to be captured. He could have done so much more damage, but he didn’t.”

“You sure it’s not because he was weak from being hungry?” Owen looked towards Alpha who had finally laid down.

“That’s what I thought but…He didn’t really even try to kill anyone. It was all bluff charges. He stayed sedated during the trip back, I made sure of it since I didn’t want him to stress himself out. When we got to the enclosure, we were all certain he was still sedated. Chuck poked him a few and everything. Didn’t respond and was as limp as could be. So, he went in to do an exam.” She sighed and shrugged slightly. “Turns out, Alpha was just pretending.”

“He pretended to still be sedated?” Owen’s attention went back to Kaitlyn, surprised at this information.

“Yeah. He waited for Chuck to crouch down in front of him. That’s when he opened his eye and looked right at me before he attacked him. Killed one of the ACU guys, too. He’s seriously smart, Owen. I think you’ll be able to do some stuff.”

“I don’t know…Being that smart might not be a good thing.” Owen was having second thoughts about agreeing to this…But at the same time, he wasn’t one to back away from a challenge.

“Can you try? You know raptors better than anyone here at the park. I’m not expecting him to be as well trained as your girls, but just anything that’d make it safer for the workers. They want to eventually put him on display.”

Owen sighed and looked past the vet towards the raptor who seemed to be lightly dozing in the shade. With how colorful and impressive Alpha was, he wasn’t surprised that the higher ups would want to showcase him. Finally, he focused back and Kaitlyn, then nodded. “I’ll try, but I’m not making any promises.”

“Great. I’ll give you access to his file. It has all of his medical information and my notes on him so far. If you could upload any personal thoughts you have on him, that’d be great. I just want everyone to be on the same page with him. We don’t know much about his personality just yet and if we find something that sets him off, I want it to be well known to the care team.”

“Yeah. I can do that.” Already, Owen was thinking on things to do. Likely, Alpha wasn’t used to humans, so the biggest step would be trying to humanize him…If that was even possible. “Would it be alright if I show up in the evenings? I’m just wanting to sit outside the gates and talk to him…Maybe toss some food at his head.”

“That’d be fine. Right now, the main concern is just getting weight back on him. I’m sure the stress of being captured and moved didn’t help.”

He only nodded and watched Alpha get up to go to the waterer. After a moment, Owen made his way towards the stairs the led to the outside of the enclosure.

“What are you doing?”

Owen shot Kaitlyn a cocky smile, “Introductions.”

After a half second, she followed after him. “I gotta see this.”

He made his way to the alcove that served as the loading area and stopped at the gate. There, he made a sharp whistle, which seemed to get Alpha’s attention. Mostly, he was curious to see what the raptor would do.

The water tasted strange. It lacked the flavor that the island’s steams had; it tasted…Sweet. Honestly, it made him wonder if something had been put in the water. Off to his right was a sharp whistle and he eyeballed the male…Owen, was it? He saw Kaitlyn behind the man; her blue hair stood out vividly and made it easy to remember her. Slowly, he drifted closer to the gate, eyeing the human that was supposed to ‘train’ him.

Owen’s body language didn’t suggest fear, but instead a tense wariness. He stopped at the gate and tilted his head down so that he could examine the human with an eye. Then he pressed his nose against the bars to sniff of him; sweat and raptors. Female raptors…But they smelled different from the raptors on Sorna. Strange.

“You’re a big one, aren’t you?” Owen murmured softly as he looked up at the raptor. He’d known that Alpha was massive just from seeing him while on the catwalks, but having the raptor in front of him made him feel tiny. It was vaguely unsettling on how quiet Alpha was; Owen was used to the vocalization of his girls. It made him feel that something was about to happen.

He eyed the man in front of him before he narrowed his eyes slightly; Owen visibly tensed. Interesting…He was paying attention. With little warning he lunged forward and threw himself at the gate. Despite the heaviness of the gate, it still gave a slight rattle. The man took a sharp step back, but didn’t exactly seem afraid...More that he was expecting further attacks. He made a guttural growl and swiped out with a hand towards Owen, deciding to test this theory.

Thankfully, Owen was out of reach when he was swiped at, but he couldn’t help but stare at Alpha’s hand: four fingers and a thumb. “Is…That normal for Utahraptors?”

“No…They’re supposed to have three fingers like Velociraptors.”

“…Weird.” He watched as Alpha pulled his hand back and had the distinct feeling that he was being analyzed as much as he was analyzing.

He eyed the human, finding this interesting. After a moment, he took a step back and then jerked forward, as if he was going to charge the gate again. Owen flinched but didn’t take a step back like what most people would do. Very interesting…Finally, he turned and walked away, quietly laughing to himself.

The soft, throaty chittering the raptor made as he walked away wasn’t a sound he’d heard before. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was being laughed at. He’s smart, though. I can see it in his eyes…He was trying to see how I’d react.”

“He does that to everyone…Except for the ACU people. They’re the only ones he’s absolutely violent towards. Doesn’t matter if they’re new to the enclosure and he’s never seen them, he’ll try to attack them on sight.”

“Good to know.” Owen nodded as he watched the raptor disappear into the undergrowth. Then, he glanced behind him at Kaitlyn. “So, he likes rabbits?”

“Honestly? I think as long as it’s meat he’ll eat it. I just threw a rabbit in because it’s big enough that he won’t choke when he practically inhales it.”

He snorted, “I can see it. Well, I’ll look over his file and see what I can come up with.”

Later that evening after he’d eaten, Owen opened up his laptop and logged into the park intranet. There, he found a notification that he’d been added as a collaborator to file UTHRPT-001. While the file opened, he picked up the laptop and flopped down onto his bed with a sigh. He wasn’t entirely sure what the hell he’d gotten himself into with Alpha.

When the file loaded, he skipped past the genetic structure. He didn’t really care about that; he was more interested in the health information. The preliminary information on the raptor was relatively meager. It had his height, weight, and length, but not much else. Further down the page was the medical information.

Due to how little was known about Utahraptors, Kaitlyn had noted that she had used the lab values for Velociraptors, instead. Overall, the values were all within normal limits except for his iron levels and red blood cell count. Once more, Kaitlyn had made a note. This time that the anemia was likely caused by the parasite load Alpha had.

Further down the page was more tests, namely to see if the raptor carried any illnesses. He had a clean bill of health in that regard. The only major health problems seemed to be the anemia and worm issue. Owen clicked to go to the next page.

There, Kaitlyn had detailed out her plan for Alpha’s care. Already, she had started a round of vaccinations of the in-activated vaccines. She noted that she was hesitant about giving him weakened live vaccines due to a combination of the stress he was under and how he was likely weakened from being underweight. From there, she detailed out supplements, wormer, and potential routine care activities.

The mostly clean bill of health relieved Owen; he’d been worried about potentially carrying something back to the girls. With the rest of the animals in the park healthy it wasn’t likely that Alpha would get sick. Still, he hadn’t really figured out how he was going to tackle the issue of humanizing the damn raptor.

At this point, his earlier idea of just sitting outside the gates, talking to Alpha, and throwing the occasional rabbit seemed like the best chance. Unfortunately, Owen had no idea if it’d work…And a gut feeling told him that the raptor was a great deal smarter than anyone gave him credit for.


	2. Unusual Intelligence

When darkness finally fell, he began investigating the enclosure closer than he had in previous days. Kaitlyn had mentioned something to Owen, something about putting him on display. Frankly, he had no idea what that might mean…Especially when they wanted to ‘train’ and ‘humanize’ him. Whatever it meant, he didn’t like it.

He walked to the walls around the enclosure and tilted his head; softly, he made a purring snort as he examined them. The walls of the enclosure were grooved, but the grooves were vertical…And while there were small things that jutted out, exhaust vents it looked like, he doubted they’d support his weight as a human. No longer was he the lanky boy he once was. He discounted the idea of scaling the walls after brief consideration. Lightly, he tapped his toe claws as he scanned the enclosure. The gate.

He could certainly climb the gate; the bars were far enough apart that he’d be able to have a good hand and foot hold. When he got to the gate, he tilted his head to the side. No, the gate wouldn’t work either. It was in a slight alcove and would be too far of a stretch for him to reach the catwalk. He stepped closer to the gate and eyed the button on the wall on the other side of the gatebefore reaching for it. It was a fair bit out of reach. Still something to keep in mind.

He turned around and tapped a toe claw again as he continued his investigations. Well, there were the trees. He walked over to the small group of trees that provided shade for a small part of the pen. While the bark was smooth, that wouldn’t provide an issue when it came to climbing. What _was_ an issue was how far away they were from any of the cat walks. He wouldn’t be able to make the jump. With a rumble, he pushed against each of the trees to see if he could push them over. No…That wouldn’t work either. They seemed to be relatively sturdy.

He let out a frustrated snort before walking into the shelter. Much like the loading gate, there were two buttons on the wall. Also like the loading gate, he couldn’t reach them. He’d need some sort of stick or branch to be able to hit them. Either of the gates were a viable option, honestly. Though the loading gate was the better of the two since it led right into the jungle. The shelter gate led into the small building attached to the enclosure and the less time he spent wandering around it, the better.

After pawing around in the shavings that covered the shelter floor, he finally laid down. While he had zero issues with sleeping outside, he was used to heavier greenery that blocked the sun better. So far, allowing himself to be captured hadn’t been too bad. He had a frequent supply of food, even if he hadn’t figured out the scheduling yet…It had also started forcing him to think differently and he didn’t feel that he was going to lose himself. Now, he just had to figure out how to escape. Still, he had the start of a plan. He gave a final, full body stretch before settling down to sleep.

It was the mechanical sound of his breakfast being lowered into the pen that woke him up. He made a soft, sleepy noise before he rubbed the side of his head against his flank to rid his eye of the gunk build up. After a moment longer of trying to wake up, he got to his feet and slinked out of the shelter. Crouched on the catwalk was Owen. He gave the human a slightly annoyed look and made a quiet growl under his breath before he focused on his breakfast.

The young steer still had its eyes open and the snot from its nose was still wet; this was a freshly dead animal. Good. He circled his meal, deciding where he wanted to start. Finally, he leaned down and gutted it open with the middle claw of his hand before he started rooting around. Every so often, he’d pop his head up and look around. It was a force of habit, as was how quickly he ate. He _knew_ he was the only one in the enclosure. Just as he _knew_ he had scheduled meals and there was no risk of going hungry. But the habit of defending his kills and wolfing down his food remained.

A slightly too large chunk of meat caught in his throat, prompting him to cough it back up. Had he been human, he would have grimaced. He really did need to slow down on his eating. Bit by bit, he stripped the steer of flesh and tossed away the larger bones as he finished. When he was half way done, he looked up at the catwalk where Owen was still watching. He gave the man a bit of a stink eye look, but went back to eating.

A few moments later, a relatively good imitation of a raptor bark sounded from above. He focused on the man and turned to face him, but didn’t respond. Interesting. While he knew he likely was around raptors, he didn’t know how much knowledge he had about them. Apparently, it was enough to be able to mimic one call decently enough.

Movement from the edge of the catwalk caught his attention. A soldier…Or rather, ‘Asset Containment Unit’, as he’d learned, walked towards Owen. He didn’t like them, and made this no secret when he let out a snarling bark as he stood up straight.

Since he didn’t have anything planned with his girls today, Owen had decided to sit in on Alpha’s breakfast to help get a better idea of the raptor’s personality. Already, some traits had started to become obvious. He was very aware of his surroundings and had immediately picked up on him being on the catwalk.

After watching him eat for a bit, he cupped his hands over his mouth and mimicked the raptor bark that he had dubbed ‘you have my attention’. It was no surprise that it got Alpha’s attention, but it did surprise him that the raptor didn’t reply. He hadn’t heard the dinosaur make a single noise so far. Even when Blue had been by herself as a hatchling, she’d been very vocal.

However, this train of thought came to a halt when a guard walked towards him. Below, Alpha had stopped eating made a blatant aggressive call. Owen looked to the guard, but didn’t stand up. “Can you make it quick? You’re upsetting him.”

“Everything upsets him.” The guard grunted, “But yeah. Just wanted to let you know that they’re going to work on cleaning his shelter.”

After Owen’s acknowledgement, the guard continued past him towards the other side of the pen. Alpha tracked him and remained standing up straight, still making aggressive calls. It was only when the guard was out of sight that the raptor seemed to quiet down and resume eating. He quietly wondered what the cause of the hostility was since Alpha didn’t act that way towards him or Kaitlyn. Did it have to do with the capture? But then…Kaitlyn had been present during the capture. Strange.

He was picking at the last remains of the steer when a buzzing noise from the shelter caught his attention. As the gate to the shelter closed, he meandered over curiously. The worker gave him a wary look and pressed himself against the far wall before he started raking up the shavings. He side-stepped and craned his neck to peer into the shelter better. By the open internal gate was a wheelbarrow and a bucket with…He wasn’t entirely sure what.

A scraping near his feet caught his attention. The worker was holding the very end of the rake to try and pull the bedding towards him while maintaining as much distance away as possible. He focused on the rake. That…Would work perfectly. He reached through the bars and grabbed at the rake. The worker abruptly proved that he had a magnificent pair of lungs and let out an ear-piercing screech. With a bit of fumbling, he grabbed the rake and got it onto his side of the gate. He promptly spun around and darted into the undergrowth.

Owen stood up and watched Alpha up until he reached into the shelter; he started jogging for the building access door. The scream of the worker just nudged him into a flat run. He launched himself around the corner expecting all sorts of carnage. Instead, he only saw the worker with his back pressed against the wall, hyperventilating.

“You alright?”

The worker looked over at him, wide eyed, and nodded a few times.

“What happened?” He took the young man by the arm and gently guided him to the breakroom.

“Uh. I was trying to get the bedding by the gate with the rake and it reached through the bars and basically went ‘this is mine now’ and…I let him have it.” He shakily took the paper cup of water that Owen offered him.

Owen wasn’t entirely sure what was meant by ‘this is mine now’, but he hazarded a guess, “He reached through the bars and grabbed the rake?”

The worker made an affirmative noise as he sipped on the water. “Pulled it through the bars and took off with it.”

This made Owen raise his eyebrows and almost laugh at the absurdity of what he was being told. “I…Guess someone missed a pile of shit in the corner or something.”

“…Or something.” The worker replied a bit weakly.

After dinner and the enclosure had settled in the quietness that only the evening brought, he got to work. He’d stashed the rake in the undergrowth for the remainder of the day and with no one around to watch him, he set his plan into action. The button for the loading gate was too far away for him to hit with the rake, so he quickly gave up on that.

The button for the shelter was another story. He reached out with one arm and held the rake to try and hit the button. After missing numerous times, he snorted in frustration before clumsily turning the rake around to try and use the end with the prongs. It smacked against the cement wall a few times, the sound echoed metallically in the quiet hallway. Almost…Had it. Owen walked around the corner holding a metal bucket in one hand and a metal chair in the other.

Well...Shit.

He locked eyes with the man who seemed pretty caught off guard at his antics. Slowly, he pulled the rake back towards him which seemed to be enough to jar the human out of his surprise. The bucket and chair hit the floor with a clatter as Owen bolted to grab the rake. Since the gig was up, he let go of the rake and turned to leave.

The sharp whistle caused him to look back, even as the rake was pulled away from the bars. Owen had raised his hand to gesture at him; he had no idea what it was supposed to mean.

“Just…Stay there.” Truthfully, he had no idea what he had just seen beyond the fucking raptor using a tool. None of his girls had done that, nor did he know why he’d gestured at the thing as if Alpha knew what it meant. Owen slowly backed away from the gate to return to the dropped items. It surprised him that Alpha stood there, head tilted quizzically. What the hell.

He slowed turned to watch Owen return with the chair and bucket; the bucket had rabbits in it. The man set up the chair out of arm’s length and tossed a rabbit between the bars before sitting down.

“Since you stood there and listened to me…Somehow.”

He sniffed the rabbit before tossing it down his gullet. Then, he pressed his nose against the bars and sniffed, wondering how many more rabbits were in the bucket.

Owen quietly watched the raptor in front of him for a moment, “There’s something different about you…I don’t know what.”

Since he wasn’t going to get another rabbit just yet, he turned to get a drink from the waterer. He could…Recall Michael saying that, so many years ago. He briefly closed his eyes, trying to recall the other’s face. The memory was fuzzy, anymore, but he could still make out dirty blonde hair and golden eyes. A faint memory of a scent bubbled up…a mixture of musty raptor and human. The man was speaking again and he briefly looked towards him.

“…What I do know, is that you’re smart…Probably was the leader of your pack, if you had one. Have my own pack.” Owen smiled fondly when he thought about his girls and began talking about Blue, Charlie, Delta, and Echo. He really didn’t have much of a reason to talk about the pack besides getting Alpha used to his voice.

He didn’t pay much attention to what was being said, it didn’t really matter to him. Years ago, he had a name. A human name, but it was just out of his grasp. It had faded away, much like other parts of his early life. But he needed a name, and not just this ‘Alpha’ bullshit. That’s what they thought he was, not what he truly was. His human name, even if he remembered what it was, didn’t define him anymore.

He searched his memories to try and find something that did. A memory rang clear in his mind, of a much young him sitting on a rock…Lanky and full of enthusiasm. Beside him, a slightly older teen with a perpetual predatory grin. The other male lightly shoved his shoulder and laughed before speaking.

 _“You’re my_ _Murder Raptor_. _”_

The name stuck out to him. _Murder Raptor._ Michael had called him that a few times as a nickname. He made a quiet rumble under his breath. That…Defined him quite well, actually…But it was a bit on the long side, wasn’t it? _Murder_. Yes, that seemed very fitting. He looked back to Owen who’d gone quiet and was simply staring at him. Slowly, he tilted his head, curiously, and waited for the man to continue. When nothing happened, Murder turned back to face him and pressed his nose against the bars again, then made a soft, inquisitive noise.

It was almost as if Alpha had been thinking about something with how he’d been staring at the wall…But it was the inquisitive noise that the raptor made that caught him off guard. Finally, he tossed another rabbit into the shelter. “Yeah, alright. You kinda deserve that for listening to me ramble.”

With how late it was, Murder was starting to get tired but at the same time…It was nice having someone there. He hadn’t had that in so long. Finally, he kicked around in the bedding and laid down against the bars, then turned his head to rest it on his side so he could continue watching Owen.

Nothing about this raptor’s behavior made sense to Owen, and he likely knew raptors better than anyone in the park…Maybe the planet. And yet…Alpha was throwing it out the window. He licked his lips at the monumentally stupid idea that had popped into his head. But the positioning of the raptor would keep him safe.

Slowly, he eased out of the chair and into a crouch, then carefully moved closer. Alpha cocked his head slightly and made a soft warbling chip; Owen immediately recognized the sound as being curious. What the hell, why wasn’t the raptor being aggressive? Even his girls, with all the work he’d done with them, had aggressive streaks a mile wide. A wild raptor, of all things, should be trying to eat his face for being this close. It made him seriously second guess the idea of touching the raptor because a large part of him screamed that it was a trap.

Then his hand touched Alpha’s back; the raptor flinched and tensed up slightly. Despite him not making any noises, Owen knew that the dinosaur in front of him was probably worried. “Hey. Hey. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

He froze at the touch, the sensation almost foreign. It’d been so long. The faint memories of the last time he’d been touched bubbled up and he violently shoved them away with a soft hiss through clenched teeth. When Owen froze and started pulling his hand away, Murder pushed himself against the bars. He didn’t really want it to stop.

“…Christ. You were alone, weren’t you?” Owen murmured softly. Kaitlyn had told him that Alpha had been the only raptor to show up, and he knew that raptors almost always moved in a pack. Between that, Alpha being underweight, and the knowledge that the dinosaur population was dwindling…It made him wonder, if there had been others…Had they survived? Or had they starved to death and Alpha was the only survivor. It reminded him of Blue, really. She’d been the first to hatch and had immediately imprinted on him. Always demanding his attention and would become upset if he left the hatchery.

Owen smiled slightly at the memory of ‘accidentally’ spending a few nights with her. He’d gotten scolded heavily for it, but it’d about broken his heart to hear her panicked chirps when he left. So, there had been some relief when Charlie, Delta, and Echo had hatched since it gave Blue others to interact with while he was gone. She had become less reliant on his interaction to keep her happy, but it had really driven home the point of how social raptors were.

If his theory was correct, he figured it might explain the strange behavior: Alpha was looking for a pack. It might help him ease into getting the raptor to trust him, but at the same time…He needed to be careful. Already, he’d proven to be very, very intelligent and Owen knew he couldn’t allow himself to be lulled into a false sense of safety. Alpha was still very much a wild animal, but Owen already had far more questions than he did answers.

He lightly traced a finger over one of the scars that dotted the raptor’s back. They were strange, honestly…Something had dug its claws in deep and dragged them down Alpha’s back, nearly to his hips. With how deep some of them were, he was surprised that they hadn’t gotten infected. It made him wonder how the raptor had gotten them and what, exactly, had caused them. Another strange scar was the jagged thing down Alpha’s left leg. All and all, it left him itching to know more about the raptor in front of him.

Finally, he leaned back and grabbed the last rabbit out of the bucket to gently toss it in front of the raptor’s mouth. “…Here.”

Truthfully, Murder had begun to doze off, so the sudden sensation of the rabbit thumping onto his side caused him to sleepily blink a few times. Finally, he nipped the rabbit and shifted his head to drop it in front of him. There, he held it down with a hand and started gnawing on it, much like a dog would with a bone.

Owen finally sat down and stared at Alpha. This was so incredibly surreal, and he wasn’t entirely sure how much of it should be included in his report. After a bit longer, he got up to his feet and moved the chair against the wall. “I should head home. I’ll see about stopping by tomorrow around the same time.”

With his girls, consistency had been key and he figured the same thing would apply to Alpha. The raptor in question stretched, the long toe claws twitched forward. Honestly, the claws were long enough that Owen was sure whoever ended up on the business end would be completely fucked. After another moment, Alpha shifted himself and got up, then kicked around the bedding a bit before laying back down in the middle of the shelter.

He lingered for a moment before grabbing the bucket to put it up, then headed home. The drive back to his trailer gave him time to think about what to put into the report, but when it finally came time to type it up, he stared at the blinking cursor. Owen couldn’t shake the feeling that Alpha was incredibly different. While all his raptors were intelligent, Blue was the most intelligent…But the Utahraptor completely blew what she was capable of out of the water. Alpha had been trying to use a fucking rake to open the shelter gate, for Christ’s sake. None of his girls had that level of intelligence. Owen scrubbed his hands over his face. And Alpha was supposed to be a wild raptor, to boot…But he’d seen the list of dinosaurs that were supposed to be on Isla Sorna and Utahraptor was _not_ one of them.

“I’m missing something big.” Owen murmured to himself. He needed to talk to the people who were involved in Alpha’s capture to maybe get some information. Hadn’t there been, strangely enough, mercs involved? He tapped a pen against the table, mimicking the rapid claw tapping he’d often heard his girls make when they were considering something.

Finally, he started typing his report. He chose to omit, against his better judgement, about Alpha using tools and the fact that he’d been able to touch the raptor. Instead, he talked about Alpha’s curiosity and inquisitiveness, how he wondered if the behavioral strangeness was due to a deceased pack and being alone. He wasn’t interested in putting everything into Alpha’s file due to knowing the higher ups could read it. Instead, he wanted to do his own poking around before he brought things up to Kaitlyn. His mouse cursor hovered over the ‘Submit’ button for a long moment before he finally clicked it.

Murder watched the reflection of lightning flickering on the clouds. While he wasn’t in danger of starvation anymore, he was still uncertain about what his future held. Certainly, the two humans that he had frequent contact with weren’t too bad, he still remained suspicious. Sure, Owen claimed that his ‘pack’ of raptors saw him as the alpha, but he found this dubious. Likely, the raptors would turn on him the moment they discovered something stronger than him. The pack leader was always one who was smarter or stronger than the rest.

He snorted loudly. If the human who thought himself to be ‘pack-alpha’ assumed that he’d fall into line with the rest of them…Well, he was sorely mistaken. Murder hadn’t survived on Sorna for seventeen years just to cave to someone. Let Owen try; he wouldn’t be trained like some sort of dog.


	3. Misdirection & Secrets

The next week and a half saw Owen splitting his attention in multiple directions. His primary focus was the continued training of his girls, but then he also needed to spend time with Alpha to get the raptor used to him, and to top it off he had to figure out who else had gone to Sorna. The first two tasks were easy enough, but the third had given him problems.

For starters, the ACU guys were all unwilling to even talk about the mission. They all vagued about it and about all he was able to find out was only one of the mercs had survived. No one could give him a name and Owen wasn’t sure if it was because they simply didn’t know or were unwilling to. So, in between trying to figure out who his mystery merc was, he spent an hour each evening with Alpha and did research on Utahraptors in general.

Each day, he always arrived at 8:30pm on the dot. The first two times, Alpha had been wandering the pen, but after the third time, Owen was a bit surprised to find the raptor waiting for him in the shelter. It sort of made sense. Alpha was figuring out the scheduling for everything and seemed to have calmed down a bit with his eating. Either that, or the slight bit of weight he’d put on had helped. He still tended to guard his food, from what his file said.

Most days, Owen talked about his raptors when he spent time with Alpha. It was a topic that was easy to talk about and one he could spend hours on. Frankly, he had no idea if Alpha enjoyed his company or was merely interested in the food. He quietly warned himself against giving the raptor human emotions; trying to anthromorphize the dinosaur was a dangerous thing to do. As intelligent as Alpha was, he didn’t doubt the raptor would try to gut him given the chance.

His attempts to find the mystery merc finally hit pay dirt when he dished out the money to buy an ACU soldier several rounds of beers. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was a name: Rowan. No last name, but according to the other man, Rowan had been the surviving merc and had somehow managed to get himself drafted as working as a dinosaur pen cleaner. Owen found this strange. Since he didn’t have anything planned with his girls, and according to Alpha’s file, the raptor was scheduled for more vaccinations and worming today, he decided to hunt down this Rowan guy.

He found him outside an enclosure in the shade, sitting on an overturned bucket, a cowboy hat perched on his knee, eating a sandwich. After a moment longer, Owen walked over to him, “Are you Rowan?”

Dark eyes gave Owen a once over before the man tilted his head to the side, “Depends on who’s asking.”

“I’m Owen.”

“The raptor trainer?” After getting an affirmative reply, he dropped his sandwich into a ziplock bag and looked up at Owen, “Yeah, I’m Rowan. What’cha want?”

Owen crouched down, “Wanted to ask you a few questions about when you went to Sorna to capture the raptor.”

Rowan had been adjusting his hat where it perched on his knee, but froze at the mention of Sorna, “They didn’t ask you to train that damn raptor, did they?”

“They did.”

“Oh my God, man. You’re not going to be able to. I mean, shit. I’ve heard about what you’ve done from the other guys, but he’s a whole ‘nother animal. Fucker wrecked my team in under three minutes. Boom, boom, boom. All dead and most of ‘em in pieces.” Rowan picked up his bottle of water. “He’s as smart as they come. You ain’t going to be able to outsmart him.”

Owen raised an eyebrow at this. That was more typical raptor behavior, so what’d changed? “But you survived.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause he wanted me alive.” Rowan sighed and looked down. “Look, man. I can’t say much. I just about bled a pen dry signing all the NDAs for the job and I don’t want any more shit to come down on me. I’ll just say this: he left me alive as bait so I’d lead him to the others. He’s extremely, extremely smart. I haven’t seen the raptors you run, but he’s nothing like ‘em. I can already tell you that.”

This honestly left him feeling a bit unsettled. There was a very, very massive chunk of the puzzle that he was missing. So, he spoke quietly so that no one overheard him, “I’ve seen the list of dinosaurs that were supposed to be on the island, and his species isn’t one of them. I know you know something, and I swear to God and whatever other deities might be out there, that I won’t tell anyone anything if you tell me what you know.”

Rowan hesitated and was silent for several minutes, “Look. I’d love to, but this shit is way, way above your pay grade and isn’t anything you want to get involved in. I promise that. Be careful of him, Owen. You’ll stay alive as long as you’re useful to him. Now, if you’ll excuse me…My lunch break is over and I still have about fifty million piles of shit to clean up.”

He watched the other man stand up and settle the cowboy hat on his head. Rowan gave him a slight nod before walking away. All and all, it just left Owen wondering what the fuck he’d gotten himself into. Why would NDAs, of all things, need to be signed? It was something he mulled over for the rest of the day.

Murder wasn’t a fan of all the activity on the catwalks today. There were twice as many guards than usual and Kaitlyn spoke quietly to one of them. He felt that something was about to happen and suspected that he wasn’t going to like it. Anxiously, he paced, trying to keep an eye out on all the guards.

“Firing!”

What? Firing? He turned to focus on the soldier who’d yelled when he felt the _thump_ and sharp bite of a tranquilizer dart in his neck. Immediately, he screeched and bolted for one of the trees to knock it off. Someone else yelled and he felt another _thump_ in his flank. This time, the sensation felt duller. The world was fuzzy and out of focus. He had the vague sensation of hitting something with his side, but the sensation of pain was as sluggish as his mind. Murder barely registered the sensation of hitting the ground.

Every part of him felt numb, from his toes, to his tongue, to the tip of his tail. He was on his side, on the ground. What happened? He tried to lift his head to look around, but even the thought took too much effort. Softly, he made a noise and opened his eyes; the world was a bright, unfocused mess. Slowly, he worked on trying to move his limbs, but they responded sluggishly and a dull pain lanced across his right flank. Murder made another noise, this one closer to a moan than anything.

Steadily, the sensation of numbness went away, and the fog began to lift from his mind. As it did so, he increasingly became aware of an ache in his flank. With a groan, he rolled himself up onto his belly and blearily looked around. He was in the shade and over by the loading gate was Kaitlyn; her body posture suggested concern.

What happened? He closed his eyes and briefly rolled them, as if it’d help clear his mind; it didn’t. Slowly, he tried to get back up to his feet but sagged back down. His legs felt like jelly still. Murder made a raspy grumble and shook his head before focusing on his flank. There was a jagged injury that’d been stitched up; the skin was discolored and dark. He wrinkled his nostrils and sniffed of the injury before he sneezed at the medicine smell.

Immediately, he felt concerned. Had they done something to him? With how jagged the spot was, he couldn’t be certain. Finally, he grunted and clambered to his feet where he stood there, unsteadily. His leg ached when he put weight on it. Slowly, he looked around and spotted a small, dried trail of blood. He followed it to one of the support columns for the catwalk above; on the corner of the column was blood. Murder shook his head again, trying to clear the last bit of fog from his mind. He vaguely remembered being shot with a dart, so he must have injured himself at some point.

After getting himself a drink, he chose to hang out in the undergrowth, leaning against the wall of the enclosure. The sedative was taking a bit of time to get out of his system. On top of that, his flank ached strongly and he wasn’t keen on putting weight on it. As a final thing to round off an already shitty day, he started getting a bad stomach ache.  Nothing seemed to help the pain. Not walking, not pressing himself against things, nothing.

It was only when he left a very disgusting present in the corner for the workers to clean up that he actually felt better. Physically, anyway...Sort of…Not really. His flank was bruised and putting his weight on it made his leg ache, and while the stomach ache was gone, it’d been replaced with a low nausea. The only thing that’d improved was the grogginess from the sedative. Overall, Murder felt fucking _pissy_.

When dinner was dumped into the pen, he picked at it and only ate enough to slightly sooth his sour stomach. He wasn’t keen on trying to eat the entire thing for fear of simply vomiting it up. Truthfully, he just wanted to be left alone tonight and absolutely didn’t look forward to Owen’s nightly rambling session.

He had his uninjured side to the hallway when Owen arrived; leaning against the coolness of the cement had done wonders for the injury on his flank. Murder looked towards the man, noting how his face held an expression of concern…But he didn’t care. With a low growl, he stalked to the gate and slammed his good side against the bars with a snarl.

Despite the puzzling information about Alpha, Owen was in a good mood and looked forward to seeing the raptor. He felt he’d been making some progress in getting him used to things, plus the carnivore was starting to look a bit healthier. However, when he turned the corner, Owen immediately knew something was wrong. Normally, Alpha would be standing at the gate, waiting for him. While the raptor never vocalized, it had always been clear that he was waiting for his evening snack. Instead, Alpha was leaned against the wall with his left leg bearing most of his weight. On top of that, his stomach was somewhat sunk in at the hips.

Before he could speak, the raptor growled and then snarled before slamming himself against the gate. From what he’d seen of Alpha’s personality so far, Owen pegged this as severely out of character. He set the bucket of rabbits on the floor, even as he was snarled at.

“Hey. Hey. What’s wrong?” He held up his hands, but remained where he was. “Alpha, what’s wrong?”

The raptor made a throaty, guttural growl before turning around to stalk to the waterer. In doing so, Owen got a very good at the injury on his flank. Alpha’s earlier, sudden movement had caused it to bleed slightly. It wasn’t enough blood to be concerning, but he knew very well that the raptor’s bad mood was likely being caused by the injury. “Christ. What happened to you?”

He didn’t dare approach the gate, not with how agitated Alpha was. Honestly, he debated leaving the raptor alone for the evening. However, footsteps from behind him caught his attention. Kaitlyn. She also got snarled at, but Alpha didn’t charge the gate this time.

“What happened?” Owen turned to face her and frowned at the grimace she made.

“We sedated him to do the next round of vaccinations and to finish worming him. He freaked out while the sedative was kicking in and slammed himself against one of the catwalk support beams. So, he had to be stitched up.” She leaned against the wall and watched Alpha who was giving the two of them a blatant stink eye.

“That explains the injury, but why’s he thinner?”

“An insanely high worm load. I was concerned about giving him a full dose because of his health and I didn’t want to kill off too many worms at once. It can make things worse, so I gave him a smaller dose than what he should have had to start things off. He got the full dose of a different wormer today and it didn’t sit well on his stomach. He should feel better in the morning.”

Owen gave her a tight lipped, unhappy look before he looked back to Alpha who was glaring at them both…But at the same time, he had the unsettling feeling that the raptor was paying very close attention to what was being said. “What about his leg? He can’t put much weight on it.”

“Short of giving him pain medication, there isn’t much we can do. If the wormer gave him gut issues, it probably affected the entire GI and most pain meds will just make that worse. He barely ate dinner tonight so…” She gave a shrug. “Not a lot to do for him.”

“How many more rounds of vaccinations and worming will he need?”

“Probably three more of the vaccines because of boosters and I’ve been avoiding giving him the weakened live vaccines. I can’t say how many more rounds of worming. At least one. Have to wait for whatever eggs are still there to hatch before a final worming nuke. It just depends on the results of the fecal floats here in a few days.” She offered Owen a tired smile. “But once his worm issue gets taken care of, he shouldn’t be anemic anymore or need the daily iron supplements.”

Owen nodded, but remained watching Alpha. There had been a subtle shift in the raptor’s demeaner; he was paying very close attention to them and had the same analytical look as he did when they first ‘met’. “So, he ought to be feeling better and gaining weight soon?”

“I think so. Between his different health problems, I’m surprised he has the energy to be as much of a hellion as he’s been so far.” Kaitlyn laughed. “Makes me wonder how much worse he’s going to be once he starts feeling good. Anyway…I just wanted to check on him since it took a while for the sedative to wear off. I’ll let you two visit.”

Owen looked over to her and gave a slight nod. “Yeah, it’ll be great to see him healthy. I’ll see you later.”

“…Don’t do anything dumb, Owen. I’ve heard plenty about the things you’ve done around raptors.”

“Me? I’m the textbook example of caution around raptors.” Owen shot the vet a cheeky grin and was given an unimpressed look in return.

“…Right.” Kaitlyn just shook her head and left.

Owen glanced after her as she left and muttered, “I don’t do dumb things around raptors. I take calculated risks.”

He looked back to Alpha who somehow managed to look unimpressed. How the raptor was able to seem so expressive was beyond him; it was the eyes, probably. “Don’t give me that look.”

After he was certain that Kaitlyn had left, he headed to the breakroom where he dumped ice into some papertowels. He had a very solid theory concerning Alpha…The damned raptor had calmed down as him and Kaitlyn had talked about what happened. Either that was a coincidence and he’d simply calmed down or he’d understood and processed what had been said. The former was most likely, and the latter was completely outlandish…But what Rowan said earlier had stuck in his mind. _He’s as smart as they come._

With the ice in the papertowels, he grabbed a handtowel out of the cabinet and returned to the gate. Christ this was a monumentally _stupid_ idea. He’d established a number of rules for his girls and most of them involved not doing certain things, including stepping into the ‘maiming zone’ and the raptor in front of him had a much longer reach than his girls. Alpha had moved to the waterer, but was giving him a vaguely curious look. Owen exhaled softly, knowing just how dangerous of a game he was playing. Getting attacked by his girls was only likely death, but getting attacked by Alpha would be certain death.

In his downtime, he’d done research on Utahraptors and learned a great deal about them. Even without whatever tampering InGen had done with Alpha, they were the brick powerhouses of the Dromaeosaur family. Not designed for the speed that Velociraptors were known for, but straight up raw strength instead. While a Velociraptor could remove a man’s arm with its jaws, a Utahraptor could crush his head.

Probably a good thing Alpha couldn’t fit his muzzle through the bars.

Fuck it. Owen stepped over the imaginary line he had painted in his mind and into the ‘danger zone’. He was tense, ready to jump back if needed, but tried to keep up an act of calm confidence. Alpha made a soft, but curious sound. Owen held the bundle of ice in one hand and used the other to pick a chunk up; he held it towards the bars. “It’s ice…For your leg.”

Alpha took a step forward, but gave no indication of attack. Instead, he stretched his neck out to sniff of the chunk of ice before swiping it with his tongue. Owen’s heart pounded in his chest at how close his hand was to the raptor’s mouth…And the very, very large teeth. This was very, very stupid and could easily end up with him dead.

“If…” Owen hesitated at the absurdity of it all, but things were starting to veer out of the realm of ‘just coincidence’. “If you lay down, I can put it on your bruise to help with the pain.”

There. He said it. Slowly, he pulled his hand back to drop the chunk of ice back into the towels. Alpha didn’t do anything and just watched him, then turned away. So, it had just been coincidence, then. Owen sighed and started to mentally berate him over the massive risk he’d ju—…

His mind came to a grinding halt when Alpha finished his circle and laid down in front of the gate in such a way that made access to the injury easy.

Owen damn near dropped the ice in shock. But…How? The implications…He slowly grabbed the bucket of rabbits and pulled it over to him before he reached through the bars to gently put the towel of ice on the raptor’s flank. The flinch damn nearly had him yanking his hand back through the bars, but when nothing happened, he simply tossed a rabbit to Alpha and then gawked.

Murder had been thoroughly unimpressed with the number of visitors tonight, but on the other hand, he had learned a great deal about what was done to him. It caused his anger to simmer away, but didn’t do much for his general unwell feeling. At least it was supposed to go away at some point. He just wasn’t keen with the idea of being further poked and prodded. On the other hand, it explained plenty on why he hadn’t been feeling well. And here he’d thought it was simply due to the lack of food.

Still, it was a bit of surprise on what Owen did once Kaitlyn had left. He thought about what was being offered for a long moment. The ache in his leg wasn’t getting any better, but on the other hand it might reveal more about himself than what he wanted. Then again…It seemed that Owen already suspected something with how he was asking a direct question.

Finally, he turned around to give himself more room to lay down. The action caused the stitches to tug and pull, but within a few moments, the towel of ice had been set on his flank…And he got a rabbit to munch on, to boot. Still, it caused him to wonder what had prompted Owen to directly ask a question. The man hadn’t given any indication that he thought him to be anything more than a wild raptor. Very interesting…

Owen remained quiet and just watched Alpha eat. Not only had the raptor seemed to understand what was said, he responded to it. None of his girls had…He sighed. While he kept comparing Alpha to Blue and the girls, it was becoming increasingly clear that the raptor in front of him was absolutely beyond their capabilities. Owen ran a hand through his hair. NDAs, species not on the official list, hyper intelligent raptors…What the fuck had InGen done on Isla Sorna?

Above his paygrade indeed…


	4. Acting Skills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate title: Alpha Does a Thing and Owen Has Continual Existential Crisis' Over Raptor Intelligence.

The half drank bottle of beer had long since gotten warm, and its only use was something for Owen to tap his middle finger against as it rested on his thigh. The condensation from the bottle had either evaporated away or rolled down the bottle to form a damp, irregular circle on his pant leg. He hadn’t noticed as he stared into the darkness in front of him. The sound of nighttime insects and occasional night bird was punctuated by the faint, occasional whale-like call of Apatosaurus. Truthfully, he had no idea how long he’d sat outside, thinking.

He had tried to rationalize away the strange things he’d seen Alpha do since he started working with the raptor. The use of tools, the blatant understanding of the English language, and the ability to follow simple instructions…Owen suspected that the ‘simple instructions’ part was largely because he hadn’t tried anything complex. Finally, he tilted his wrist to look at his watch; it was past midnight.

“Fuckin’ Christ.” He sighed and dragged his hand down his face, then tilted his head back before he poured the beer out. Nothing was planned for the morning, so it didn’t matter if he got up later than usual. About the only thing he did on the off days was watching his girls have breakfast. He finally got up out of his chair and went into his trailer to dig around for an external drive. A very specific external drive.

After sorting through several labeled boxes and finding a missing pair of favored pants, he finally found two boxes with specific labels written in black sharpie: Raptor Stuff and Raptor Toys. For the moment, he set the box labeled ‘Raptor Toys’ to the side and dug into the ‘Raptor Stuff’ box. It had note books full of his research. A slight smile crossed his face when he pulled out one notebook with a chunk missing out of the cover. Blue had gotten mad that he’d been writing instead of paying attention to her. He pulled a smaller box out labeled ‘Videos’.

Unlike the rest of the things in storage, the external drives had been meticulously labeled with dates and names on them. He searched through them till he found the one he was looking for and plugged it into the laptop. Then he started searching through the videos saved on the drive, skipping past his vlogs to recordings he’d made of his girls, specifically, Blue. Out of all the raptors, she was the most intelligent. The videos he wanted to review the most was the intelligence tests. Part of I.B.R.I.S was not only to study behavior and trainability, but also intelligence…Primary reason, actually. Some of this had taken the form of little tests disguised as games.

In the video, he watched himself working with Blue. On the floor of the hatchery, he’d placed three colored pieces of paper: red, blue, and yellow. Then, he showed a red plastic toy to Blue before placing it on the red paper; he repeated this for blue and yellow. Finally, he set a yellow toy in front of her to see what she’d do.

Blue picked it up in her mouth and ran off while making excited chirping trills. She finally dropped it and play pounced it several times, then looked to him for approval. Owen couldn’t help but laugh at the noise of exasperation he heard himself make on the video. After playing with her to burn off extra energy and several more tries with showing her what to do, Blue finally figured out what he wanted her to do.

The next test was shape based. It involved a small, plastic box with three shaped holes: a square, a circle, and a triangle. Once more, he showed her by placing the appropriate plastic shaped toy in each hole before setting a shape in front of her.

Her reaction had been to try and shove everything into the circle hole. Everything. All the shaped toys, the toys dotted around the hatchery floor, his hand…Then she had jumped on top of the box and used it as a springboard to get onto his back. He had finally shooed her off of him when she attempted to perch on his head.

Owen slouched in his chair a bit as he continued to work though the videos of the different intelligence tests. Alpha was smart and was able to understand things that none of his raptors could. Just how far did this intelligence go? He knew he was still trying to rationalize everything he’d seen, to give a reason other than ‘fucking scary smart raptor’, because the raw implications of the raptor being that smart scared him. Only some of the files concerning Sorna had been declassified with in the company, and even then, most of those were way, way above his clearance level.

Most of what he’d been allowed to was all of the old data involved with the raptors, including the reports by Robert Muldoon. He’d been to Sorna, twice, to help with the dinosaur removal…Sort of. He’d grabbed a group of ACUs and headed off into the jungle to observe the raptors. That had been nothing short of amazing. Despite how short of a time he had to observe the pack dynamics, it’d given him valuable information. When the video ended, he sat there and stared at the media player, deep in thought.

That seemed to be a constant trend since he’d been introduced to the raptor.

Hoskins couldn’t know a damn thing about Alpha’s intelligence. The man loved to hang around when Owen trained his girls, like a fucking vulture…Ready to swoop in and preach the potential of using raptors for ‘military application’. The frightening thing was, he knew the man was right. His girls were all still young, barely adults and yet they knew over 40 commands already, most of which had been picked up with only a few sessions of work. They showed no sign of slowing down and were largely considered the most intelligent dinosaurs in the park.

And then along came Alpha to blow everything out of the water with a mountain of TNT. If Hoskins even heard an iota of the raptor’s intelligence…Owen knew he’d never hear the end of it and he also knew it would spell bad things for the raptors…All five of them. The thought made him roll his eyes slightly as he unplugged the hard drive. He’d swore he wouldn’t get attached; Alpha was just a side project he was helping with.

Yeah, and that resolve lasted what, all of four days? So sue him if he happened to like hyperintelligent dinosaurs with big teeth and sharp claws. He got up to close a window, the cool night temperatures had caused a chill to settle into the trailer. The problem was, others were bound to find out about Alpha’s intelligence…Which meant he’d need to tell Kaitlyn, at some point. He just didn’t have a good enough gauge on her personality to know if it was a good idea or not.

The next morning saw Murder groggily dragging himself out of the shelter. Besides his flank still bothering him, he felt considerably better. Even then, he suspected it would have hurt worse had it not had the ice from last night. His nausea had also resolved itself, so he ripped into his morning meal with his usual enthusiasm. On the catwalk above, he heard Owen speaking to Kaitlyn.

“Do you think the steers are big enough for him? I understand about wanting to minimize waste, but with him being underweight…”

“You’re wondering if some of his eating behavior is hunger related?”

“Maybe. The girls always leave a bit behind when they finish but will wander back after about an hour or so to finish off their food.”

“How many meals are they getting?”

“Two, but they get a small lunch if I’ve run a training session.”

Kaitlyn mused for a bit. “He gets fed at 8am and 6pm. How about we keep the steers the same size, but I schedule him for a weanling at 1pm?”

“I think that will work. He’s not really that vocal, not like my girls. So I’m just concerned he’s not getting enough food.”

“Attached already?” Kaitlyn laughed. “Alright, I’ll go get the order put into the system.”

The idea of a lunch appealed to him plenty. While he was used to a lot less food, and had often gone to bed hungry on Sorna, he was really, really liking the frequent meals. Personally, he preferred to have a large breakfast, a large dinner, and have small snacks between the two. Obviously, that wasn’t going to happen here…But again, better than starving.

A new, unfamiliar voice broke the silence. “So! This is the raptor everyone’s been talking about? He’s a massive cuss.”

Murder looked up and focused on the heavier set, older male who swaggered across the catwalk to Owen. Interestingly, Owen had tensed and leaned away from the other man slightly. He made a soft noise as he watched the interaction; he was still learning who the key players were.

“Yeah, that’s Alpha.” Owen’s voice had a tone of false friendliness and suggested that he’d rather be left alone.

The man leaned against the railing and peered down where he locked eyes with Murder. Most people didn’t maintain the eye contact, this one did. He narrowed his eyes slightly and felt a low growl bubbling in his throat.

“Doesn’t like being stared at, does he?” He finally looked over to Owen, “Going to train him like your girls, Owen?”

“He’s an adult male, Vic. Staring is an aggressive move…And no. I’m not training him. He’s stupid and stupidly aggressive. I’ll be lucky if I can manage to get him to follow basic instructions to make him safe to be around the workers.”

This…Struck him as strange. Owen was blatantly lying. Murder cocked his head and snorted. Maybe it had to do with how he didn’t like the man?

Vic peered down at Alpha again, “That’s a shame. I mean, think about it. His size would be amazing in combat. Might not be as fast as your Squad, but I’m betting he could dish out some damage. You sure you can’t train him? Just gotta knock it into his thick skull.”

The sound Owen made was nothing short of exasperated, “Yes, I’m very sure.”

Rather than replying, Vic headed for the stairs at the end of the sidewalk; Owen was right on his heels. Murder watched the two and quietly reasoned out why Owen had lied. Then he wondered if it was a subtle way of instructing him on how to act. It was clear to him that the human had figured out that he was a bit more than a standard raptor.

Owen glared at the back of Vic’s head as they walked and managed to temper his expression of exasperation by the time they reached the loading gate. Alpha was still over by his breakfast, watching them.

“How tall is he, Owen?”

“Six foot at the shoulder.”

“Damn. I bet he would just tower over your squad.” Vic walked to the gate and grinned slightly as Alpha began to slowly walk over. “Guess he’s coming over for a looksee.”

Owen remained where he was. He had specifically said what he said to try and ward off Vic, but also to quietly see if Alpha would pick up on what he said. Honestly, he had no idea where the raptor’s intelligence ended. The problem was, the man next to him was stubborn about the idea of using dinosaurs, especially raptors, in military combat.

He looked towards Alpha who’d suddenly stood up tall, making him look even more intimidating than he already was. Then, the raptor made a loud, drawn out, warbling bark. Owen wasn’t entirely sure what the noise meant, but it sounded liked an aggressive warning. He reached forward to tug the back of Vic’s shirt. “I think you should back up.”

He was waved away. Alpha took a step forward and repeated the call, but this time it held an edge of a snarl. “I really, really thing you should back up.”

“Naw. Cuss thinks he’s top dog. He’s not, you and I am.”

“No, I’m pretty sure he _is_ top dog.”

He looked to Alpha who’d stopped standing up straight and then looked to Vic who laughed.

“See? He backed down.”

That’s when the raptor fucking _roared_ and charged. This wasn’t the charge he’d done when Owen had first met him. No, that had been a test to see how he’d react. Owen took a step back and swore he could feel faint vibrations in the ground from the raptor’s footfalls. Vic was slowly inching back, but then threw himself backwards when Alpha slammed his shoulder into the gate. The gate rattled, but held firm…For now.

Furiously, Alpha lashed out with a hand and made a deep, guttural snarl capable of sending even the bravest men running. Vic sat there on the ground, wide eyed as the raptor shoved himself against the gate a few more times. Finally, Alpha made a low, raspy clicking noise in the back of his throat before he turned and stalked away, seemingly frustrated with the inability to reach them.

“…So how about that idea about being top dog?” Owen stared at the gate, honestly feeling as terrified as Vic looked. He had no idea if that had been an act or the real thing. Finally, he sighed and looked to Vic who was still sitting there slack jawed. “…He’s still sick, too. Imagine how bad he’ll be when he’s healthy.”

Vic finally picked himself up off the ground and looked to Owen as he forced a grin, “He’s got spunk. I like it.”

Owen stifled a sigh and just violently rolled his eyes when the older man walked past him, slapping a hand down on his shoulder. If there was one man who he wished would spontaneously blink out of existence, that man would be Victor Hoskins.

Truthfully, Murder had enjoyed the little display of aggression, even if it’d left his flank and shoulder sore. So, he meandered back to the shelter and laid down before he sniffed of his flank. No, it didn’t seem to be bleeding, so he hadn’t made it worse. Still, he’d probably over done it…Slightly. Hopefully, he wouldn’t be paying for it later.

The sound of foot steps caused him to look over at Owen who still had the tight movements of someone on an adrenaline high. Murder merely yawned and flopped over on his side before stretching slightly. If anything, he felt like taking a nap.

He wasn’t sure what to expect when he made his way down the hallway to the shelter. A still agitated Alpha, maybe. The raptor slamming himself against the bars when he rounded the corner. Owen _did not_ expect the dinosaur to give him a bored look and settle on its side. “…That was all an act…”

Alpha opened an eye and shifted his head back slightly to focus on him before made a soft noise that Owen swore had an edge of a purr. Oh, Jesus Christ, the damn raptor was pleased with himself, wasn’t he? Honestly, Owen was convinced the fucking thing was going to start speaking perfect French at him at some point.

He finally sighed and glanced behind him before looking back to Alpha who was sleepily watching him still. Owen spoke quietly, “Good act…I think. I’ll…Explain later.”

After leaving, Owen returned home to figure out what he wanted to do with Alpha this evening. He stared at the box of raptor toys before he opened it up and sorted through it. All of the rubber toys bore tiny teeth marks; the soft stuffed toys had long since been maimed into oblivion. He ignored those, they were too small for Alpha and were likely a choking hazard. Instead, he pulled out the colored blocks and the box of shapes.

Owen stared at the two boxes for a long moment before he finally sat down on the floor. “The hell am I doing?”

If someone else had been doing what he was doing, he would have smacked them upside the head and immediately had them transferred to another department for ignoring safety rules. Alpha was a fully grown, wild raptor who was extremely capable of killing people…As he’d heard from Kaitlyn. Yet, here he was, having broken several of his rules in under two weeks of being assigned as the raptor’s trainer.

Owen knew raptor behavior. He’d published numerous papers in animal behavior journals on raptor behavior. Sure, the papers all had co-collaborators listed on them, but those had been because he didn’t know a damn thing about paper formatting and the proper citation and had needed help. In exchange, he agreed to add the names of the interns so they could list something on their CVs…But all of the research, data, and everything else had been his.

He _knew_ raptors. Knew what they were capable of. Knew how smart they were. Owen sighed, and Alpha just wrecked everything he knew. It was insane and got more preposterous as time went on. He grabbed his notebooks and sat down at the table to start flipping through them. It was only when it was after lunch did he take a break to respond to a text from Kaitlyn; she was concerned about how Alpha was walking stiffly. This prompted him to call her and try to explain what had happened.

Kaitlyn just about went off when she found out Vic had paid a visit to the enclosure. “Excuse me while I go fucking force feed Hoskins raptor shit.”

Owen blinked a few times and stared at his phone for a moment, more surprised at the sudden cursing from the vet than her hanging up on him. It was nice to know that he wasn’t alone in his dislike of the man.

After dinner, Murder slept. During the middle of his meal, Kaitlyn had tossed a rabbit down onto his ‘kill’ which promptly went down his throat. A short while later, the aches and soreness he had began to fade. It was pretty obvious to him that she’d shoved some sort of medication into the rabbit. Either way, it helped the ache in his shoulder, but at the cost of making him drowsy.

When he woke up, he was greeted by the sight of Owen on his phone. The man looked up when he rolled onto his stomach and gave a healthy yawn. While the aches were back somewhat, he felt a lot more rested. Owen gave his phone a final glanced before pocketing it.

“Feeling better? Kaitlyn said she gave you some pain meds.” Owen snorted. “She was pissed at what Vic did.”

Murder simply gathered his legs under him and wallowed down in the bedding. He felt lazy and honestly a bit sedate. Likely, the medication was still in his system. After a few minutes of silence, Owen began speaking which prompted Murder to climb up to his feet. Rather than talking about ‘his’ raptors as he usually did, he talked about the man who’d visited the pen. Victor Hoskins. He talked about how the man wanted to weaponize dinosaurs, a stance Owen vehemently disagreed with, and he finally admitted how he wanted to keep Vic from finding out about things. As he spoke, the tone of his voice steadily got angrier until he abruptly went silent.

This made him tilt his head to the side and move over to the bars. While he didn’t trust the Owen in the least bit, he recognized the significance of what he was doing. Murder pressed his nose against the bars and made a quiet warble of concern. It was concern for the situation since he understood the dangers if this…Victor found out. A memory flitted through the back of his mind. _Oh, you’re going to be **perfect**_.

Owen hesitated at the noise. Concern. That was a concern noise. Slowly, he moved towards the bars of the gate, tense and ready to jump back…But Alpha made no movement that suggested aggression. If anything, his left arm was tucked a little closer to his body than it normally was. Once more that mantra of ‘this is fucking stupid’ tromped through his mind, but Owen shoved it away. He’d been breaking all the rules with this raptor, so what was with breaking another?

He knew he was well within the danger zone; he tensed when Alpha twitched the fingers of his left hand. The raptor simply scratched at his stomach. Owen exhaled and slowly moved his hand out. Slow and careful; quick movements could trigger the prey drive. He held his hand just above Alpha’s nose; the head was a touchy area. Let the raptor decide.

Owen stood there, tensed. The adrenaline caused his kneecaps to jiggle; the animal that peered down at him was frankly terrifying. He’d seen the strength Alpha had, and yet, here he was. Trying to pet the fucking raptor like the dumbass he was. A rumbling snort blew flecks of snot over the palm of his hand. Alpha sniffed of his hand and seemed like he was about to bump his nose against Owen’s hand when he suddenly pulled his head back and focused on something further down the hall.

With the moment interrupted, Owen stepped backwards to a safer distance and looked behind him at Kaitlyn. She had her arms crossed, despite holding a rabbit in one of them, and was giving him a _very_ disapproving look.

“Owen Grady. I didn’t agree to you being here after hours so you could get your hand bit off.” She let her arms drop to her sides and walked over.

“Can’t get a raptor to trust me without taking some risks.” Owen couldn’t help but feel slightly irritated. He’d been so close.

“…This isn’t the first time, is it?”

“…He likes back scratches.”

Kaitlyn rolled her eyes and scoffed. “He absolutely terrorized Vic, and you’re here trying to pet his nose like he’s a horse. Either you’re short a whole lot of brain cells, or you’ve got the biggest brass balls known to mankind.”

“…Eh, a little from column A, a little from column B.” Owen couldn’t help but grin, briefly. “No…Vic set Alpha off. He tried to pull a dominance thing where he stared him down. Wanted to be the quote, ‘top dog’. I tried to warn him.”

“And he didn’t listen, I take it?”

“Nope! Alpha gave a few warning calls before he charged. I tried telling you that over the phone today, but I think you locked in on ‘Vic being a shit’.”

“…I did. I don’t appreciate him coming around and bothering my animals. Especially when they’re sick.” Kaitlyn then held up the rabbit. “Speaking of, his next dose of pain medication. It’s the last dose he’ll get unless he’s still acting like he’s sore in the morning.”

She set the rabbit down on the chair and then nudged the bag next to it with her foot. “What do you have in here?”

Owen hesitated for a moment. “Toys. When my girls were tiny, part of my research was testing their intelligence and problem-solving skills. Color recognition, shapes, that sort of thing. I was going to do the same with Alpha.”

Kaitlyn gestured for him to continue, “Go on. I want to watch.”

He suppressed a sigh. Owen had wanted to do this in secret, but he knew the longer things went on, the harder it would be to hide Alpha’s intelligence. Finally, he pulled out the color game and set it up. Since the raptor had moved to the shelter entrance, he clicked his tongue a few times to get his attention.

Murder looked over at the noise and shuffled back. He really wasn’t keen on the idea of being treated like some child. That’s really what it was ,in his mind. He leaned down and snorted harshly, causing the papers to flip over.

Owen sighed and set the papers back up. “…He’s smart. Very smart. But I don’t know how smart.”

He crouched down and tilted his head to better look at what was set up. There were three pieces of paper, red, blue, and yellow then 15 colored blocks arranged in front of the paper. Murder flicked his eyes back up to Owen’s face.

“It’s a matching game.”

“Yes, I can see that Owen.”

“…I wasn’t talking to you.”

Murder made a quiet rumble but found himself amused at the sheer annoyance on Kaitlyn’s face, but then focused back on Owen. Did he really, really want to further prove his intelligence?

“Don’t BS me. I didn’t forget about the rake.”

“…What rake, Owen?”

Owen just held up his hand, prompting Kaitlyn to glare at him. Finally, Murder grunted and reached through the bars to rapidly move the blocks to the appropriate colored paper. Initially, he moved a few to the wrong color, but this was due to how small the blocks were. Once he had the blocks all moved, he went back and corrected his ‘error’.

“Owen…Have you done this with him before?”

“Nope!” Owen reached forward to pull the paper to him so that he could begin setting up the shaped blocks. “I came up with the idea to test him on this last night.”

Murder almost rolled his eyes at the shapes in front of him. Picking up each individual shape would be tedious. Much like the first test, there were 15 blocks. Instead, he hooked a claw into one of the holes of the bucket lid and pulled the lid off. Then, he nudged the box onto its side so that he could flick the shapes into the box. When he was done, he set the box upright again and replaced the lid.

Owen stared for a long moment, “…I’m not even mad. That’s amazing.”

“Owen…You need to start explaining or I’m going to hit you in the head with a rabbit.”

Owen held up his hands, “Okay, okay. Just a moment.”

He pulled the box back to him and stood so that he could toss the medicated rabbit to Alpha. “Get some rest, big guy.”

Once the rabbit had been chomped down, Owen turned to Kaitlyn and sighed before he started quietly, but quickly explaining everything he’d seen or learned about the raptor. As he did so, her face went through a variety of expressions. “So…Basically, no one can know about how smart he is. I’ve been trying to rationalize it but…I can’t.”

Kaitlyn chewed on the knuckle of her thumb. “Keep working with him. Don’t put anything unusual in his files, only tell me what you find out. I’ll keep the bastard off your ass. I already threatened him with taking the issue to Claire on grounds of harassing a sick animal. You know how she’s all about the bottom line.”

“Yeah, _please_ avoid going to her if you can. We…Have a history.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have a history with half the park.”

Owen was about to retort when Alpha suddenly snorted from the waterer and splashed water all over the floor.

“See? Even the raptor agrees.”

Owen was far from amused.


	5. Rowan

With how intelligent Alpha was, Owen had opted to put his training notebooks away. They really didn’t work with the raptor since most of the techniques worked off of imprinting…A tight bond he wouldn’t be able to form. That being said, he figured he’d be able to form something since elephant handlers and great ape handlers often formed strong bonds with their charges. But there was a problem with that idea. While elephants and apes both had group dynamics, they weren’t predators. That wasn’t to say they couldn’t be dangerous, but it was a different type of dangerous.

Owen closed yet another animal behavior paper with a sigh. It looked like it was just going to be the standard positive reinforcement training that he’d done with his girls, but he just didn’t know where to start. He felt he’d gotten off on the right foot with Alpha, so far. His ultimate goal was to be able to touch the raptor’s head. If he was able to do that, it signified a nice amount of trust. He was certain that he’d almost managed it the other night…Till Kaitlyn had interrupted.

Still, it had worked out. He’d gained an ally to help keep Vic away from Alpha. The threat of going to Claire was likely going to be enough to keep the man away, even if Owen wasn’t a fan of the idea. She was very interested in keeping a high profit margin, and he figured that Alpha’s capture hadn’t been cheap, nor the care for his health issues…Or the permanent paddock that was in the early stages of being built. If something happened to the raptor, that was a lot of money that just got flushed.

Owen was hellbent on ensuring nothing happened.

Since Kaitlyn was almost always up later and up before him, he had taken to reading Alpha’s file each morning over breakfast. It let him gauge what sort of mood the raptor might be in that evening based on what was done earlier in the day. In short, the more activity around the pen, the higher likelihood of him being in a bad mood in the evening. Overall, it made Owen question the idea of putting Alpha on display. If the raptor had issues with workers being around his pen, how was he going to react to hundreds if not thousands of guests each day?

As he sipped his coffee, Owen eyed the two most recent time stamps on Alpha’s file. One update was listed at 0147 and detailed the plans for the next day, which was simply an enclosure cleaning. Then there was an update at 0815 which talked about Alpha’s recovery with his leg and the need to examine the stitches. Honestly? He had no idea how Kaitlyn managed to do so much on such little sleep and had half a mind to ask her which demonic entity she’d summoned to gain the ability.

Owen glanced at a little window that popped up on his laptop screen; it was the park instant messaging service. Anyone who was added to a file was added to a group chat with everyone else who was collaborators on the file. He clicked on it. Kaitlyn was asking him to swing by Alpha’s pen in order to help coax the raptor into the shelter so they could pen him up while the enclosure was cleaned. He simply replied that he’d be there in about twenty minutes.

When he got to the pen, there was already a lot of activity which made him internally groan. Alpha was going to be testy, at best…He just knew it. Quickly, he laid out the plan to Kaitlyn. She’d whistle to get the raptor’s attention and then throw a rabbit towards the shelter. From there, Owen would be by the internal shelter gate to further bribe Alpha in and then shut the external shelter gate. In theory, it sounded like a decent plan…But the big, glaring issue was the raptor. It all relied on him paying attention and staying long enough in the shelter for the door to shut. But with how intelligent Alpha was, he’d listen to Owen’s request…Right?

Wrong.

Murder wasn’t too terribly pleased with how many people were around the pen, most of them were the ACU. With how many there were, he’d already figured that something was going to happen. It didn’t help that they hadn’t fed him yet. So, not only was he feeling anxious, he was also moody from being hungry. Warily, he paced the enclosure and waited for the ball to drop. Unexpectedly, Kaitlyn whistled at him and threw a rabbit towards the shelter opening.

He side eyed it for a moment and slowly slinked over, but didn’t take the rabbit despite his hunger. Inside, by the inner gate, was Owen…With another rabbit. The man stuck his arm through the gate and wiggled the rabbit.

“I know you’re hungry. I got a bucket full of them.”

Murder wasn’t convinced, but then his stomach gave a tight twist of hunger. Finally, he snapped up the rabbit and slinked halfway into the shelter. Sure enough, Owen had a bucket of rabbits; he just snorted at the man.

“Come on. It’s cleaning day.” Wiggle, wiggle, went the rabbit. Then Owen added in a slight singsong voice, “Pleasedon’trun. Pleasedon’trun. They’llshootyouraaaaaass.”

He was neither impressed with the news or Owen’s singing skills. Murder glanced over his shoulder, but looked back to Owen when the man whistled and continued to jiggle the rabbit in some macabre dance. After a moment, he stepped into the shelter and snapped up the rabbit after it’d been dropped. However, when Owen hit the button to close the gate, Murder spun around and bolted out of the shelter. Behind him, he heard a frustrated ‘shit!’ get spat out. Fuck ‘em. It was going to take more than bribery to get him to play nice.

Above him on the catwalks, the soldiers shouldered their tranq rifles…But this time, Murder felt prepared and waited for the signal.

“Firing!”

He abruptly changed direction and heard the dart whiz past his head, however, he squawked as if he’d been hit. Then he ‘bolted’ for the undergrowth where he proceeded to spam an alarm cry for a moment while rolling his eyes at his act. After a moment, he stopped squawking and lashed his tail around to make all sorts of noise as he laid down. Once he was settled on the ground, he went completely still. While his vantage point wasn’t all that great, he was still able to see some of the catwalks. It seemed they were looking for him.

“…I’m not convinced he’s tranqed.” Owen commented quietly as he followed Kaitlyn into the enclosure. Behind him, a worker pushed a wheelbarrow towards Alpha’s favored bathroom corner. “You did mention he pretended to be tranqed when he arrived.”

“It’s been ten minutes and there’s been no sign of movement, and since he’s down, I might as well check on his stitches.”

“Yeah, and no one was able to confirm he got hit.” Owen replied before he sighed and glanced up at the patrolling ACU soldiers as he stepped into the undergrowth after Kaitlyn. It took them a moment to find Alpha. The raptor’s coloration helped him blend into the undergrowth exceptionally well. Briefly, he wondered if he’d encountered the dinosaur on Sorna and hadn’t realized it. At least the vet appeared to be correct: Alpha was unconscious.

Kaitlyn crouched down and pulled on a pair of gloves before she began examining the stitches. “He’s got a bit of shavings stuck to it, but it doesn’t look infected.” Gently, she started touching the spot to check for signs of abnormal heat.

She froze when Alpha’s flank twitched.

That shouldn’t have happened if he was fully sedated. Quietly, she spoke, her voice tight. “Owen…He’s not fully sedated.”

“No shit. He’s staring right at me.” Owen stared at Alpha’s open eye and slowly reached down to pull Kaitlyn up to her feet, then moved her behind him. “Slow movements, do _not_ run. Back up slowly.”

Murder was fine with them just looking at him, but he couldn’t help but flinch when the spot on his flank was touched; it was still a bit tender. While he’d hoped that it’d go unnoticed, it very clearly hadn’t and once Kaitlyn had alerted Owen, he’d simply opened his eyes.

As the two slowly got up and began backing away, Murder softly clicked and pushed himself up to his feet. However, his attention snapped to the ACUs who’d taken noticed of how the two humans were acting; if he stepped out of the undergrowth, he’d get shot.

“We have a situation, but do not shoot unless I tell you to!” Owen yelled and held up his hand. “Fingers off the fucking triggers! You shoot him, he will attempt to kill everyone in this pen. Do! Not! Shoot!”

Slowly, Murder edged out of the undergrowth and glanced from the soldiers, to Owen, to the worker who had apparently been scrubbing the waterer, then to the shelter where the gate was closing. His attention went back to Owen when the man snapped his fingers.

“Hey. Hey. Focus on me. Kaitlyn, going to angle towards the other guy so we can back towards the loading gate.” This was a position Owen never hoped to be in. Touching and interacting with the raptor with a gate between them was one thing. Being in his pen was a completely different fucking story. He held up his hand to gesture like he would with his girls and then grimaced. “…Ah, fuck. That’s not gonna work.”

“What?”

“He doesn’t know my commands.”

Murder’s attention shifted to the worker when he dropped the bucket and started edging away. He stood up slightly and made a soft purring snort of interest. Not at the worker, but the bucket…Although the idea of trying to steal the man’s cowboy hat was tempting. He wasn’t stupid, if he ‘attacked’ the man, he’d likely get shot up so full of sedative he’d sleep for a month. Owen whistling shifted his attention back on the ‘raptor trainer’, again.

“Keep your eyes on me, Alpha. Not him.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly and side stepped towards Own’s side, forcing the man to try and stay between him and the worker. Then he twitched his lip slightly. They’d inconvenienced him by not delivering breakfast; he was going to inconvenience them. Likely, it’d end up poorly for him, but he could use the entertainment.

“I know that look. Don’t you fucking dare.” Owen had seen that look before on his girls. It usually meant that the raptor in question was about to be a mischievous little shit.

Unfortunately, Owen had moved to that he was between Murder and the bucket. Undeterred, he stepped towards the man, forcing him to back up and further away from the gate. The bucket would be his, goddammit! Though, he did pause to stare at the worker whose back was to him; he was yelling something in another language, Spanish maybe, to one of the guards. Something about him seemed familiar…It was the scent. For the moment, he chose to discount it as the man having worked in the pen before.

Owen damn near tripped over the bucket and kicked it to the side. Surprisingly, Alpha moved over to it and snapped it up in his jaws before holding it in his hands. Then he lightly tapped his claws on the plastic and made a purred snort of contentment. “…What the actual fuck.”

“…He wanted the stupid bucket?” Kaitlyn asked, similarly shocked.

Honestly, it was a stupid thing to want and Murder knew it…But he couldn’t help but feel pleased that he’d gotten the bucket and confused the ever-loving fuck out of everyone. Mission accomplished. He tilted his head and lightly nipped at the plastic bucket. Now that he had it, what should he do with it? Really, he couldn’t think of any…Ooo. Wallow area. Yes. That sounded _perfect_. He could dig a shallow hole and use the bucket to move the water from the waterers. The walls blocked the wind and made mid-day absolutely miserable. Murder made a content rumble at the idea and jerked his head to fling the bucket into the undergrowth; he’d deal with that tonight.

At this point, he’d honestly gotten bored and was about to wander off when the worker suddenly decided to bolt. Murder watched for all of two seconds before he lunged and knocked the man down. It wasn’t hard enough to do damage, but the guy would have some bruises and really…He was just playing more than anything and didn’t have any desire to kill or hurt the man. However, he tilted his head and made a confused noise upon seeing the merc from the island.

Rowan stared up at…What could he even call it besides ‘monster’? He knew what ‘Alpha’ actually was and he wished he didn’t. “Please don’t kill me. I haven’t told them anything.” He whispered softly right before several tranq darts thumped into the raptor’s side. Immediately, he brought up his arms defensively, having heard Owen’s earlier statement. Rather than reenacting the gory events on the island, he only heard a squawk and heavy footfalls before something coming crashing down a short distance away.

 Owen was beyond livid at the soldier with the twitchy trigger finger, but walked over to the worker to insure he was uninjured. Much to his surprise, it was Rowan. The merc slowly picked himself up and dusted off his hat, then sent Alpha a look as he settled the hat back on his head.

“What are you doing here, Rowan?”

“Turns out, when you tell your boss to ‘suck my dick’, you get transferred to one of the raptor pens as punishment.” Rowan gave a shrug, as if completely shocked by the idea. “Who knew? So, I’m on the schedule for the next two weeks.”

Owen just sighed and looked towards the unconscious Alpha. “He’s going to be bitchy when he wakes up…”

Rowan could only shrug again as he headed back to the waterer to finish cleaning it. He glanced over at Owen who followed him over and looked pretty displeased.

“You could have gotten yourself killed by running.”

“Look, man. He had plenty of chances to kill me before on the island. If he was going to do it, he would have.” Honestly, Rowan already figured he had a few people gunning for him since he survived the island; he was meant to die like the rest of the mercs. Death by raptor wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

Kaitlyn finally rejoined Owen and shoved her gloves into her pocket. “He’ll be out for a while. I pulled out the darts, so I don’t think he got the full dose from all of them and his breathing is holding steady but…As crazy as it sounds, I want to stay in the pen till he starts waking up. It’ll take him some time to get back on his feet and we’ll be able to get out before he does.”

Owen nodded, “I agree. They nailed him pretty good…Speaking of that…” He turned and stalked off to find out just who’d pull the trigger.

Ten minutes later, he watched the soldier leave after thoroughly reaming him out, contacting his superior, reaming _him_ out, and then having the soldier moved to a different enclosure. Feeling slightly better, he returned to where Kaitlyn was sitting next to Alpha. “Still doing alright?”

She nodded. “At least this time he didn’t bang himself up. Heard you yelling at someone.”

“Found who pulled the trigger and had him transferred. I’ll probably get griped at by Vic, but...”

“That guy can go fuck himself.” Surprisingly, it was Rowan who spoke up. The two looked over to him in surprise.

Rowan was leaning against the rake he had. “Actually had a job offer to work here at the park as part of the ACU when I got out of the military a couple years ago. Woulda picked it up, too, if Vic hadn’t stomped on every one of my nerves…He didn’t appreciate it when I told him to go fuck himself. So, I went mercing and still ended up here. Funny how that works.”

“You’re not the type I’d imagine seeing cleaning up dinosaur shit.” Kaitlyn noted.

This only made Rowan grin, “Me neither, but hell. Those lil baby bird dinosaurs are cute as shit.”

Owen just shook his head at Rowan, knowing damn well the man was flirting. “Done with the pen?”

“Just about. Figured I could spot clean the shelter if it needed it since cranky over there is napping. Was tempted to look for my bucket buuuut…I think he wanted it more than me.” He gave the two a slight nod and headed off again.

“I still find it weird that they hired him.” Kaitlyn mused. Owen made a noise of agreement.

“Isn’t there usually a wait list of applicants?” Even for the most menial of jobs, there were usually hundreds of applicants. No doubt, having work experience at Jurassic World would be stellar for anyone’s CV.

“Probably.”

Murder groaned softly. Why was he wet? And Why was he in mud? Cool water splashed up his neck and while it confused him, it helped to wake him up. Blearily, Murder opened his eyes. People around him were talking, but all he saw was something light colored. At least, he thought he heard people. Maybe it was his brain slogging through cold syrup.

He blinked his eyes again. A sheet? Something touched his back and the sheet was pulled off of him. Slowly, he raised his head, his muscles still feeling weak. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t keep his head still and it wobbled slightly as he focused on the blurry, retreating forms of two humans. Kaitlyn and Owen, maybe? They looked kind of the same…Or maybe his vision was just doubled. He somehow had four arms, now.

The sensation of his stomach twisting up in hunger wasn’t something entirely new, but it’d been absent since he’d arrived at the pen. Slowly, he eased himself up to his feet, but stood there, legs splayed while the world threatened to flip over on itself still. Between his stomach and the fuckery going on with his head, Murder threw up. What remained in his stomach from this morning came up, followed by stomach acid and bile. Even when his stomach had emptied itself, he kept heaving and gagging.

When he was finished, he stood there dazed with drool dripping from his mouth. Dully, he imagined that he looked pretty pathetic. Murder stood there for a moment longer before wobbling his way to the waterer and gulping down water fast enough that he coughed…Nearly hard enough to cause him to throw up again.  His vision still hadn’t really cleared up.

He felt like he was learning to walk again and his legs barely wanted to listen to him. Slowly, he turned and made his way to the shelter, completely incapable of walking in a straight line and dangerously swaying from side to side. Once he was in the shelter and had laid down, he tucked his head against his side and made quiet, whimpery chirps under his breath. He hadn’t felt this bad in a long time.

It was several hours later and Owen was _still_ pissed. He’d opted to cancel the training session with his girls, despite having a lot of things planned. Because of how angry he was, he knew they’d pick up on it and act up which wouldn’t be productive towards training. Barry had been slightly annoyed with him over canceling until he’d explained what had happened and how many darts the poor dinosaur had gotten in the side. While the man hadn’t been around Alpha and didn’t know much about the raptor, as soon as Owen had said, “He’s smart like Blue.” Barry had immediately gotten it and then teased him for always flirting with dangerous things.

Because of the worry over the sedative, he’d volunteered to stay at the enclosure and keep an eye on Alpha for Kaitlyn since she had other animals that needed attended to. With it being a hot day, he’d grabbed a dusty old canvas sheet and covered the raptor up before dumping water on him. Since Alpha had dropped in the sun, he was seriously worried about the issue of overheating. Thankfully, things went well and once the raptor started waking up, he pulled the sheet off and started to book it out of the enclosure.

At least until Alpha threw up. Owen stood there a moment before he waved at the ACU guys, “Stand down. He’s not in any shape to be attacking.”

It concerned him to see the raptor stumbling around, and he gave Alpha a wide berth as he made his way to the shelter. The fact that he hadn’t been noticed was pretty alarming with how alert Alpha usually was. Once the raptor had settled in the shelter, Owen shoved the wet sheet over a ladder rung and climbed up the rope ladder that’d been attached to the catwalk. Then, with the help of an ACU, pulled it up. Immediately afterwards, he jogged down the catwalk and into the building.

Inside, his heart sank at how Alpha was curled up and the sounds he was making. It was well after noon now and the raptor hadn’t eaten yet. Probably why he threw up, assuming it wasn’t a reaction to the massive amount of sedative he’d gotten. Owen sighed and dialed Kaitlyn to inform her of things, as well as get suggestions on what to do.

The vet wasn’t too happy with being called since she was currently ‘shoulder deep in a Pachy’s ass’. Something about the thing being constipated. However, after he’d quickly explained about Alpha’s condition, she gave him very specific instructions before having her helper hang up on him.  Thus, he proceeded to play phone tag between Kaitlyn’s assistant and the central vet clinic for the next fifteen minutes.

The solution? A 50 mL syringe filled with dino strength Pepto-Bismol, meat flavored of course, and chopped, warmed cow liver. In that exact order. Owen sighed at the bucket that was shoved into his arms and then grimaced when he caught a whiff of it. Not a fan of that smell. The tech offered to help, but he waved the person away and explained how Murder had his nose up against the bars. Not actually the case, but he’d manage.

The sound of the bucket being set in the metal chair caused Murder to look up. While the sedative had mostly worn off, his stomach was still doing a revolt. Owen crouched down next to the gate.

“I got something for your stomach. Just…Don’t eat my arm…Please?” He had no idea if the raptor was going to be pissy towards him or not, but then he sighed in relief when the dinosaur somehow scooched himself closer to the gate. “And something for you to eat. Kaitlyn said it should help, too.”

Right now, acting raptory was the furthest thing from Murder’s mind. Instead, he just shoved muzzle against the bars and made a quiet noise. Whatever was in the syringe hadn’t tasted all that great but it seemed to help with his stomach almost immediately.

“There you go…” Owen murmured and sat down to work on opening the bucket so he could stir the contents. “Bitched out the guy that shot you. Bitched out his boss, too. Got him transferred, so he’s not going to be coming back…Oh _Christ_ this stinks.”

Murder sniffed the air and made a soft rumble. It actually smelled pretty decent to him. Slowly, he shifted himself so that he was more on his stomach than his side; it’d be easier for him to eat.

“You know. You’re really, really lucky that I really, really like raptors. Because if you were something else? I wouldn’t be doing this.” Alright, that was actually a massive lie. He loved animals and would have done this for just about anything. Still, Owen grimaced again when he looked into the bucket. God that was nasty.

And so that’s how Owen ended up spending part of his afternoon shoveling chopped liver into a raptor’s mouth with a scoop. Honestly, it wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d done at the park. Still, by the time he was done, Alpha seemed to be a bit perkier. His eyes were still a bit unfocused, but he’d stopped with the unhappy noises.

Kaitlyn arrived a bit later with a bucket of rabbits, “Is he doing better? I brought some rabbits in case he didn’t want to go out to eat.”

Owen just held his hand up for her to be quiet, then shifted slightly to show that he was scratching under the raptor’s jaw. Softly, he spoke. “He’s doing better, but he fell asleep a few minutes ago. The sedative is taking forever to get out of his system.”

“How the hell did you manage that?”

He just shrugged. “I have no idea. I’m not expecting this to be a reoccurrence, but…He just seemed miserable.”

“I’m surprised your raptors haven’t killed you yet.” Kaitlyn muttered, but then sighed. “Well, I’ll take over if you’re wanting to go home.”

Owen nodded and pulled his hand away from Alpha’s chin before he moved to get up. However, he froze when the raptor suddenly reached through the bars and lightly grabbed his leg. He found himself staring at still unfocused eyes.

“…Oh Jesus Christ.” Kaitlyn stared at the two wide eyed. One wrong move and Owen could easily end up dead.

Owen slowly exhaled and tried not to think about the massive, sharp claws that were currently resting on his leg near a very important part of his anatomy. “I can hang out if you want. Feed you some rabbits?”

While Murder didn’t really trust either of the two humans, he trust Owen a bit more…Simply on account of having been around the man more. Since he wasn’t really feeling all that great still, he wasn’t keen on the idea of being left alone. Finally, he pulled his hand back and stared expectantly at the bucket of rabbits. Owen seemed a bit shaken but threw a rabbit at him, and while he was eating it, scrambled away. Murder was fairly unimpressed with this and reached back through the bars to grab at the bucket of rabbits.

The next rabbit smacked him right in the face.


	6. Training Troubles

While Owen had zero idea if Alpha was even trainable, despite the raptor’s high intelligence, the Cleaning Incident was proof that he needed to start working with the animal. The damn raptor had nearly gotten enough sedative to kill him, and it was really no wonder that it took most of the evening for it to fully get out of his system. It greatly concerned him on how sluggish Alpha had acted, despite grabbing Owen when he’d gone to leave. Despite his raptor pen faux pas, Owen spent the night at the enclosure to make sure Alpha didn’t suddenly take a turn for the worse.

It was Kaitlyn who found him flopped over the too small couch in the breakroom. He’d wadded up his vest to use as a pillow, but his lower legs had uncomfortably dangled over the arm of the couch. It hadn’t been a comfortable sleep, but if Alpha started yelling in distress he was bound to hear it. So, when she prodded him harshly in the side, he jumped and damn near fell off the couch. Blearily he glared at the blue haired vet who only gave him a cheeky grin.

“Sleeping on the job, Mr. Grady?”

Owen dragged a hand down his face to attempt to wake himself up, “I stayed the night in case Alpha had any issues.”

“Well, while you were sleeping, he’s been busy. I thought you were bullshitting me about his use of the rake to try and open the gate…”

“What did he do this time?” Owen felt a bit of concern as he swung his feet over the arm of the couch and pushed himself off the couch in order to follow Kaitlyn.

“I…Think you need to see it.”

He followed her up to the catwalks and stared down at the pen. Under one of the trees was a shallow pit. It couldn’t have been more than a few inches deep, but apparently, Alpha had found a use for the bucket…And used it to dump water into the pit he’d made in order to make a mud wallow. Owen stared down at the mud pit for a moment before he looked over to the raptor who currently was horking down a chunk of meat.

“So, he started feeling better after I fell sleep.” Owen mused as he scanned the enclosure to try and find the bucket. However, Alpha had cleverly hidden it somewhere. It made him wonder what else the raptor had stolen and hidden. “Yeah, he’s smart and very resourceful. Probably why he managed to survive on Sorna as long as he did.”

“He was eating just about anything he could. The first fecal samples we took for floats had rodent teeth and what looked to be fish scales. It’s not a massive surprise that he was so wormy if he was eating everything he could get his claws on.” Kaitlyn leaned against the railing. “He’s a survivor, that’s for sure.”

“How were the most recent ones?” Owen glanced over at her.

“Decent. Saw some eggs still, so he’ll need another round of wormer in a few days once they’ve hatched. I think after the next round of wormer that he’ll be dewormed, but I’ll want a final fecal sample just to make sure. I’ll also have more labs pulled to see if his iron is back where it needs to be. Though, I looked at his gums and eye mucosa yesterday and they didn’t seem as pale. So, he’s starting to recover already.”

“Well, he looks better physically. I think he’s gained some weight. Would you say he’s cleared for training?” The sound of a bone cracking caused Own to look back to Alpha who was in the process of pulling the steer’s back leg out of its hip socket.

“I’d say so.” She looked over to Owen with a raised eyebrow. “Going to risk it, even with him getting gropey last night?”

“Ah, he was just being affectionate.”

Beside him, Kaitlyn snorted loudly but then sighed. “Well, I’d call you an idiot, but that’s exactly what I asked you to do in the first place. Just didn’t know how smart Alpha was at the time. Owen, be careful. He keeps outsmarting us at every turn…Partly because we keep underestimating him.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, dangerous apex predator and all that.”

While Alpha finished digesting breakfast, Owen worked with his girls. It was nothing that they hadn’t done before, but he always found it best to occasionally revisit what they’d already learned. Not only did it prevent them from being frustrated over not exactly understanding a new concept, but it helped reinforce what they already knew. He always tried to end the training session on a good note since it made the entire session a positive experience. Overall, he was pleased with their behavior, even if Echo was being a bit snippy.

It also gave him a chance to throw some ideas around with Barry. As successful as Owen had been with his four girls…Alpha was another beast entirely. With some hesitation, he confided in the other man about the intelligence, tool using, and everything he’d learned about the raptor’s capture. While he highly, highly, doubted the other man would run off and tell people, Owen just couldn’t help but be wary about talking about Alpha and his…Uniqueness.

Quietly, Barry sipped his coffee as they stood in the shade of the raptor pen. Inside, the four raptors snarled and screeched while they argued over their early lunch. “I am not the paranoid type, Owen, but this…This stinks of something you want to tread lightly on. A raptor who isn’t on InGen’s list, who’s more intelligent than Blue, and whose capture required NDAs? This is something involving a lot of closed door meetings and secrets that shouldn’t see the light of day...”

“I know, Barry. I…There’s so many files relating to that island that’s still classified, even twenty years later.” Owen sighed and went silent when a worker passed them until he was sure she was out of hearing range. Even then, he lowered his voice. “I just wonder if InGen was doing things on that island that they weren’t supposed to. Just look at all the fiddling they did to the genes of those four.” He tilted his head towards the raptor pen.

“You think he’s a precursor...Maybe something to act a test run for what was done here?”

“Maybe? Christ…Barry…You haven’t seen him...Haven’t looked into his eyes. Blue? Yeah, you know she’s intelligent, but there’s still a wildness there. Alpha…Oh, the wildness is there, but it’s different. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He analyzes and tests. Anything we do to him while he’s awake is because he allows us to, I think.” Owen scoffed. “He’s a mischievous little shit. Gets that look like a five-year-old who damn well knows he shouldn’t be having his hand in the cookie jar but does it anyway.”

Barry slapped Owen’s back with a laugh, “Ah. So, you’ve found an animal whose head you can’t peek inside of! If anything, he’s getting into yours.”

Owen sent his friend a bit of a glare, but finally sighed and nodded. “I think you’re right…But…” He shook his head slightly, “I don’t know…I really feel I’m missing a large part of the puzzle.”

“If you get Alpha healthy, does it really matter?”

“No, I guess it doesn’t. I’m just not sure if I’ll manage the training part.” With how older Alpha was? Owen wasn’t sure if it was going to be possible.

“Just keep in mind something, Owen. With him being something entirely different, he might have entirely different needs. You keep comparing him to Blue, but everything you’ve told me just says how much like Blue he _isn’t_. I’m also not sure you’ll be able to train him, if he’s as intelligent as you claim.”

“Let’s say I can. Where do you think I should start with him? I imprinted Blue and the others. I can’t do the same with him. That’s the main issue I’m having.”

“The beginning, I suppose. What do you do if you get a dog with no training?” Barry briefly glanced at the wall behind him when the raptors went quiet.

“Teach him not to be scared of me and his name.” Owen sighed at the knowing look Barry gave him. “I doubt he’s scared of me, and I think he already knows his name…But I’ll give it a go. I’ll let you know what happens.”

“Just watch him, Owen. If he’s already tried to escape once, he’s probably still looking for a way out. Remember about Muldoon’s Big One. She kept testing and trying until she figured out a way.”

“I know…And I’m worried he’ll succeed. If I hadn’t have shown up when I did, I think he would have gotten out. I don’t know if I should be impressed or terrified.”

With it being his off day, Rowan swung by to see how the freak was doing. The last time he’d seen him, was when the critter got his side pin-cushioned by a bunch of sedative darts. He wasn’t a big fan of the ‘raptor’ for a variety of reasons, but then again, he felt a bit mixed about the creature. On one hand, the fucker had killed his team…But on the other hand…The fucker had killed his team and netted him a very, very fat pay check. Unfortunately, InGen was still dangling the paycheck above his head and only sent the sum in small chunks. The only way to get the full sum was by working at the park.

Frankly, he was tempted to hang around long enough to get a sizable chunk of the money and then taking off. The only problem was that he didn’t know if InGen would come gunning for him. After all, the whole mess with catching this…RH-34 thing had included many, many NDAs. It was the sort of business that would only end messy.

He finally took a seat by the inner gate and worked on eating his lunch. It was several degrees cooler in the concrete building than it was outside; the slight breeze from the open shelter door helped momentously. It was in the middle of the day and as much as he was curious on if the freak had recovered, he didn’t feel like frying his brain. However, Freak chose to answer that question for him.

A low clicking noise from the doorway signaled the return of ‘Alpha’. All things considered, it was probably a good name since the fuck whooped everyone’s asses. It still baffled him on how he’d been left alive, but honestly? Rowan wasn’t going to question it. A half minute later, he had a raptor nose snuffling at him and he moved his lunch out of the reach of a clawed hand.

“Hell no, you’re not getting my burger and fries.” His statement was met by a growl. “I don’t care. I’m still pissed about you grabbing me and slamming me into the dirt.”

His refusal to share his meal resulted in a loud, sharp bark that echoed further down the hallway and made him wince. Then, he was glared at. Finally, he huffed a bit, “What? You want some fuckin’ onion rings?”

He didn’t exactly expect a response since he just assumed Alpha had been born on the damn island. However, he raised his eyebrows in surprise when the raptor nodded. Honestly? He had no idea what the fuck had happened on Sorna, and at this point he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know. “…Fine. Don’t eat my hand.”

Rowan picked around in the styrofoam box and finally picked out the largest onion ring, then leaned over to dangle it in front of the beast’s snout. Quick as a snake, Alpha’s tongue flitted out of his mouth and snagged the loop of fried food. Then he tossed it into the back of his mouth before closing his eyes and making a low rumble.

“…Christ, it’s creepy when you drool like that.”

“The fuck are you doing?” Owen all but snapped at Rowan. Not only was the man sitting within the danger zone, he’d also _handfed_ the damn raptor. Not even Owen had been that ballsy.

“Sittin’ here with my thumb up my ass and having lunch.” Rowan shot the other man a shit eating grin before eying Alpha’s hand as it snuck closer to his box of food. Using the packaged eating utensils, he smacked the raptor’s hand. Alpha pulled his hand back with a quiet squawk of indignation at being caught.

“Get out.” Owen jerked his head to the side and then scowled when Rowan’s grin only got worse.

“No can do. Ye’see, my contract is held by people a bit higher on the pecking order than you. I answer to them.” He took a bite of his hamburger. “So…In other words, Owen…Kiss my Cuban ass.”

At that point, Rowan’s attempt at belligerent bravado was interrupted by Alpha. While he was busy shit talking, the raptor had crept his hand back out. Using the claw of his middle finger, he suddenly yanked the styrofoam box over to him. Before Rowan could grab it, the burger had already disappeared into Alpha’s mouth and the onion rings were about to follow. He managed to grab the box before the raptor could start pilfering the rings, and promptly smacked the thing on the nose. Alpha jerked his head back, wide eyed, and promptly sneezed. Rowan used this chance to haul his food away and look down at what was left.

“…That was $9 you fucker!”

Owen rubbed his forehead and sighed, “Just get the fuck out, Rowan.”

This prompted the man in question to send Alpha another glare before he grabbed his things and left. Once he was gone, Owen set down the bucket of large rats he had, then looked at the clicker in his hand. Briefly, he wondered if what Alpha had eaten would ruin his appetite, but he doubted it. Might as well try the training.

Murder had thoroughly enjoyed the burger he had stolen and worked on getting bits of bread out from between his teeth. Unfortunately, a raptor tongue wasn’t as flexible as a human tongue. How long has it been since he’d had a burger? According to Rowan, he’d spent 17 years on Sorna. So, that gave him a decent idea of how long it’d been. Softly, he huffed and quietly wished he had some fried chicken or something similar.

“Alpha.”

Owen’s voice drew him out of his thoughts and he looked over at the man, only for there to be a clicking sound which was immediately followed by a rat being tossed at him. With little hesitation, Murder caught it in his mouth and snapped it down. The rodent was barely more than a snack, but he was more curious on what the hell the human was doing.

“Guess you probably already know your name.” Owen held up another rat, “Come here.”

Murder blinked and tilted his head before moving to the gate in order to see what Owen wanted. Once more, there was a clicking noise followed by the rat being tossed at him. He caught it again and eyed the man. Was…He trying to train him? He narrowed his eyes slightly.

“Back up.”

Rather than backing up, he stepped to the side in order to pretend he was trying to get a better look at the bucket. No clicking, and no treat.

“No, Alpha.” A few seconds pause, “Back up.”

Murder took a half step back. A click and a rat. So, it was training. This wasn’t something that he appreciated. He wasn’t some dog to be taught tricks…And he was very determined to let Owen know how he felt about this particular idea.

“Alpha, back up.”

This time, he took a full step back. Again, the click and he had a rat tossed at him. He caught the rat, but instead of eating it, he gnawed on it a bit to make sure it was nicely gory. Then…He spat it on Owen. While most of the rat landed with a wet sound, in chunks on the floor, a bit of the gore hit the human in the face. Feeling pleased with himself, Murder curled his upper lip slightly and sharply barked to signify his dislike. Then, he turned and stalked out of the shelter to go wallow.

Owen could only make a noise of disgust at the gore that splattered on his face. While he wasn’t squeamish, it was simply the idea of it…Not to mention, Alpha’s breath was far from being minty fresh. With a quiet grumble, he returned to the breakroom in order to clean his face off. He wasn’t entirely sure why Alpha had reacted to way he had. Maybe the earlier thing with Rowan had annoyed him?

Sighing, he dried his face off with a paper towel. Still, he had gotten the raptor to respond to three commands. It wasn’t anywhere as close to what his girls could do, but considering the animal’s unknown age? He figured he was doing pretty good. It just meant that progress would be baby steps. Unfortunately, the training session hadn’t ended on a good note like he tried to do with his girls. Hopefully, it wouldn’t sour any future sessions.

Murder was less than pleased at the entire of idea of being trained like some circus animal. If they wanted him to do something, simply telling him would work. Then again, he supposed that they thought he was simply some hyperintelligent raptor. It was pretty unlikely that anyone knew the truth but the merc.

He snorted in frustration as he laid down in the mud and wallowed down to help cool off. While he didn’t know what existed past the walls of his enclosure, he knew there was some sort of amusement park. It revolved around dinosaurs…That’s all he really knew, honestly. Most of what he knew came from listening to the guards and different workers. Unfortunately, he didn’t know how accurate the information was. If he was able to escape…And was able to find clothes, it’d likely be possible for him to get off the island completely.

This all relied on him escaping, of course. Something he’d already failed at once before. Softly, he clicked under his breath as he eyed the soldiers patrolling. The workers had all been warned about his earlier antics and he hadn’t been to steal another rake. Trying to escape during one of the cleaning sessions wouldn’t work, either…The damn soldiers would likely just shoot him full of tranqs again. Perhaps another opportunity would present itself at another time; he just had to be patient.

It was later that evening, after dinner, when he was prowling the enclosure. Unfortunately, one of the guards was still hanging around, and he wasn’t sure why. At least, until a rock hit his back. Turning around, he looked up at the guard and barked. This time, a rock narrowly missed his head. Standing up straight, he made his throaty, drawn out bark of warning. Who was this asshole? He wasn’t one that Murder recognized, but the guards usually got rotated pretty quickly. Still, it was unusual for them to be around this late in the evening and they always were in groups.

Another rock hit his lower back.

“Don’t you have something better to do?” Rowan asked as he made his way up the steps onto the catwalk. “Like…I’unno. Furiously jerking off to anime?”

“Fucker killed my friend and got me fired.” The soldier replied and threw another rock. “Look at the dumbfuck. Just standing there.”

Rowan leaned against the railing next to the soldier and peered down, “I’unno, man, I’m pretty sure he thinks you’re looking tasty.”

“He can think that all he wants. Can’t get me up here.” He dug into the backpack at his feet and pulled out several more rocks. The next one he threw scored a head shot and prompted a squawk of pain.

“…Didn’t Owen get you kicked out of the area?”

“He got me completely fired. Been sitting through meetings all day and I leave in the morning. Figured I’d swing back around for a final visit. What that asshole doesn’t know won’t hurt him. Him and his fucking raptors.”

Rowan glanced around the catwalks; they were the only ones here and he had zero attachment to this shit for brains. He bumped the rim of his cowboy hat up with his knuckles. “That why you’re here when no one else is?”

“Why the fuck do you care?” The soldier leaned down to grab more rocks.

“…’Cause I don’t like assholes.” Rowan gave the man a smile that was half devil-may-care and half Cheshire Cat…Right before he knocked the man over the railing. The guy probably shouldn’t have come unarmed.

Murder took a step back, away from the screaming, flailing soldier as he fell. The man hit the ground with a thump and a groan. When he rolled over, he suddenly found himself with a raptor foot on his chest, the claw lightly tapping his shoulder near his neck. Above him, was the raptor who looked down at him with a curled upper lip.

Rowan leaned over the railing, “11-inch-long toe claw, in case you were wondering. Supposedly, three Utahs were capable of taking down a Ceratosaurous. Personally, I think Alpha here could do it by himself. He’s kinda large for his species, from my understanding. Also, to my understanding…Male raptors are highly territorial and man…You’re right in the middle of his territory.”

Murder leaned down and softly growled before he twitched his toe claw, slamming it into the soldier’s shoulder, prompting a yell of pain.

Rowan grinned slightly. “Think you pissed him off.” Then, he gave a two fingered salute, “Don’t think he’s much of a dumbfuck now that you’re in the pen. Anyway, I’ll let you two sort things out…I have money on him winning the argument, though.”

He grabbed the backpack and started whistling a song as he walked towards the stairs, even as the soldier screamed in the enclosure below.

There wasn’t much left of the soldier once Murder was finished except for bones, entrails, and fabric. While he wasn’t usually keen on the idea of eating human, he felt this was an instance where it was warranted. Feeling content, he laid down in his shelter and stretched out as he felt himself being lulled to sleep by the rain.


	7. When Egos Collide

The sound of his cell phone ringing caused Owen to spasm and nearly fall out of bed. He tensed and tried to calm his pounding heart before he did anything else, but the insistence of his phone didn’t allow him that particular luxury. With a groan, he plucked his phone up off the headboard and glanced at the caller ID. Kaitlyn.

“Hello?” He had no idea if he was even understandable and suspected that his voice was more of a slur than anything.

“Alpha killed someone last night. It looks like one of the ACU guys…”

This caused Owen to sit up in bed, “What? How?”

“I don’t know. All the gates were secure. The blood makes it look like they fell in from the catwalk. There’s not enough left for a visual ID, but we haven’t been able to get into the pen yet. I’m waiting for the security division to get back to me with a current headcount.” Kaitlyn wasn’t happy about the situation, but wasn’t exactly surprised.

“…Exactly how much is left of the body?”

“Mostly just bones and clothes...And a lot of blood.”

Owen sighed and rubbed the side of his face, “Fantastic. It must have been after hours when no one was supposed to be there. Ugh…Are you wanting me to head up or…?”

“That’s what I’m…Sec. Getting another call.” Kaitlyn abruptly hung up on him.

He just glanced at his phone and shook his head. Getting hung up on by the vet was something he’d gotten used to. Despite her friendliness, she could be incredibly curt when things were serious. Owen sat there a moment longer before finally dragging himself out of bed in order to make himself some coffee. Kaitlyn finally called him back just when he was in the middle of pouring himself a cup.

He muttered a soft swear and plucked up his phone, “Yeah?”

“Does the name Marcus Ulrich ring a bell?”

“…That was the fuck who got trigger happy. One of the heads of the security division called me yesterday and said he was fired. He was supposed to be on the boat back to the mainland this morning.” Owen set his cup of coffee down by his laptop and pressed the button to turn it on.

“Well, that’s our mystery guy, most likely. Seems he decided to turn up for a final visit and it didn’t go well for him.”

Owen was quiet for a moment, “How’s Alpha acting?”

“About the same as usual. He didn’t eat all his steer like he usually does, but if he had a late-night snack, that might be why. The only strange thing is that he’s sort of squinting a bit with his left eye. When you get a chance, can you head out here and bribe him into the shelter so I can try to get a look?”

“Let me throw down a cup of coffee and grab a bagel, then I’ll be out.” The news that Alpha was squinting concerned him. While the cause probably wasn’t anything spectacular, he was just worried Ulrich had tried to do something as revenge for being fired. Why else would he have headed back to the raptor pen?

Thirty minutes later, he was in the breakroom with a rabbit waiting on Kaitlyn to get off the phone. More than anything, it was funny listening to her thoroughly cuss out whoever was on the other end. He wasn’t entirely sure who the unlucky person was, but the expression on her face said it was wiser not to ask.

Once she was done, he followed her to the shelter gate. Luck happened to be with them since Alpha had chosen to get a drink from the shelter waterer. True to her word, the raptor had his eye squinted shut and was watching them with his uninjured eye.

“It looks swollen.” Kaitlyn commented as she leaned to the side in hopes of getting a better look. “Maybe bruised, too.”

“I’d hate to sedate him again for an exam, but…Don’t you need to remove his stitches, too?”

She shook her head, “His stitches are the dissolving kind. I won’t need to do anything with his flank unless it suddenly gets infects, but we’re beyond that point. When I looked him over the other day, his injury was doing pretty well, so I don’t anticipate needing to do anything with it. As far as his eye goes, unless it starts getting worse, it’d be best just to leave it alone. There’s no blood, so it’s probably just swollen.  Let me know if you start seeing discharge, though.”

Owen nodded and jiggled the rabbit at Alpha who sniffed of it, but didn’t seem interested. “Did he just finish eating?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t be too worried about that. If he turns his nose up at lunch, then I’d be concerned. Well, whatever happened, Ulrich paid for it.” Kaitlyn commented as she looked at her watch. Then she sighed and glanced to Owen. “I gotta go. I have a bunch of physicals lined up for today.”

“Alright. I’ll se you later.” He gave a slight nod as she left, then looked back to Alpha who’d decided to lay down and nap. After a moment, he hit the button to close the shelter gate. Rather than ducking out of the shelter like last time, the raptor simply snorted and yawned.

A thorough cleaning of the enclosure had yielded most of Marcus’ larger bones. Owen suspected that what hadn’t been found was likely being digested and probably wouldn’t be found unless someone felt like spelunking in raptor shit. Alpha’s bucket was also found, but he simply told the worker to leave it. Honestly, it wasn’t hurting anything.

Murder was woken up by the sound of the inner gate being kicked. Sleepily, he raised his head and glared at the merc from the island for waking him up. Rowan, was it? Still, he supposed he couldn’t be too terribly mad after last night. He huffed and stretched slightly, intent on going back to sleep…But then Rowan sat down with his back up against the bars. Not really the smartest thing to do, but he wasn’t particularly in the mood to do any maiming.

He closed his eyes in order to resume napping but heard the rustling of a bag right before he smelled food. Was that fried chicken? Murder opened his eyes again and sniffed the air.

“Like the smell of that, huh?” Rowan glanced over his shoulder before putting his hand between the bars where he held out a large chunk of fried chicken. “I got you a bag. Turns out the place was gonna throw ‘em out. Something about them being too old. Massive waste if you ask me.”

Murder warily eyed him for a moment before gingerly taking the chunk of chicken in his teeth. It was getting close to lunch time anyway and his stomach was starting to make grumpy noises. He pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth and lightly sucked on the fried chicken. While a raptor tongue wasn’t as sensitive to flavor as a human one, it was sensitive enough to cause him to rumble in enjoyment at the taste of the food. There were so many things he’d missed while being on the island.

After a moment of contemplation, he inched closer to the bars and pressed his nose against them. A moment later he was given more chicken. For the time being, he decided to play nice…Even if he would have preferred to have the entire bag. However, he was willing to be forgiving since Rowan was also in the middle of eating…While bitching about one of the workers. Something about eating the lunch he’d bought. Murder didn’t particularly care and when the chicken slowed down, he shoved Rowan’s back with his nose.

“Ow. Fuck. Fine. Here’s your goddamned chicken, you greedy asshole.” Rowan grumbled and passed more chicken between the gate bars.

Owen walked around the corner, intent on working with Alpha for a bit before he released the raptor for lunch. However, he froze when he saw Rowan and what the man was doing. “What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

“…What the fuck does it look like I’m doing? I’m having lunch.” Rowan replied, and as if to emphasis his point, took a bite of his burger.

“Get the hell away from the bars before he kills you.” Owen carefully walked towards the gate so he didn’t set Alpha off.

“What, this pissy shit? Nah. I got him eating out of my hand.”

Owen hadn’t realized Rowan had been literal in his comment until the man picked up a large chicken tender and put it between the bars. “Did you pay attention to _any_ of the orientation?”

“…Nope. Pretty sure I skipped orientation day…Either that or I was hungover. Forget which, honestly.” Rowan replied and popped some fries into his mouth. “That shit tends to be boring, anyway.”

“Rowan…I don’t think you understand how dangerous this is. This is not some tame dog. Alpha is an extremely dangerous pre–“

“Yeah. I know. I watched the shit kill my team and the rest of the mercs that I came with. I’m very aware of how dangerous he is.” This was said as Rowan handed another piece of chicken over.

“So, why the hell do you insist on putting yourself in danger?”

“…Because he’s better company than half the people at this park.” Rowan peered into the bag and frowned before he looked over his shoulder. “That’s all I got for you, dude.”

Murder softly huffed in disappointment at this news. What he’d been given was little more than a small snack. Despite that, it had still proven to be pretty tasty. If Rowan continued to bring snacks, he didn’t have much reason to kill the man. Of course, helping out with the ACU guy had done plenty to earn some favor.

Owen gave Rowan a tight-lipped stare before he walked into the breakroom to put down the bucket of rats before he made a few calls. Yesterday, the man had claimed that he got orders from someone higher up in the company. Time to see if there was any truth to that or if it was just BS…He was damn sure that it was nothing but lies.

Fifteen minutes and several transferred calls later, he hung up his phone. Evidently, Rowan _had_ been telling the truth and Owen had hit a brick wall when it came to finding out who the man’s boss was. About all he’d managed to find out was that it was someone in the main California InGen office. The secretary had curtly told him that he didn’t have clearance and hung up on him. Feeling sour, Owen returned to the hallway where Rowan gave him a slight grin, as if the man already knew what had happened.

“Let’s get something straight. If you’re going to work around my raptor, you’re going to follow the rules I’ve laid down.” The last thing he wanted was some idiot who thought he could break the rules. At best, the guy would get himself killed, at worst he’d cause others to do the same and get them killed.

Rowan glanced at the raptor behind him, then looked back to Owen. “Pretty sure he’s not yours with that look he’s giving you.”

Owen focused on Alpha who was giving him a very blatant stink eye with a curled lip. The curled lip alone wasn’t a good thing. He sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “Well, he’s under my care and I’m his trainer…”

“How’s that workin’ out for you?” Rowan started picking up his trash and shoving it into the bag he’d brought the chicken tenders in.

“He knows his name and two other commands.” He chose to omit the fact that he’d gotten chewed up rat spat at him.

“…Pretty sure he was probably just humoring you.”

“I still think you know a lot more than you’re telling me.” Owen frowned at Rowan as the man started walking for the breakroom.

“Me? Naw. I’m just the village idiot who happens to have damn good luck.” Rowan turned around to walk backwards as he settled his hat on his head. He gave a quick two fingered salute, “Don’t get your arm bit off, Owen. ‘Cause he’s lookin’ mighty pissy today.”

He simply sighed at the man before he went to get the bucket of rats he’d left in the breakroom. When he returned, Alpha was giving him a bit of a glare. Likely he was hungry, not that Owen could really blame him.

“Alpha, back up.”

Rather than backing up, the raptor in question turned around and ignored him. It was a very clear signal of disrespect; a raptor turning its back on an alpha would quickly be attacked. No doubt, Alpha considered him ‘lower ranked’, which wasn’t a good sign. It’d make training the raptor a lot harder, assuming such a thing was even possible.

“Alpha.”

When the raptor glanced at him, he squeezed the clicked and tossed at rat to Alpha. However, the reward was ignored and instead, the raptor lunged at the gate with a snarl. Surprised, he took a step back, then mentally swore at the blatant weakness he’d shown. If he kept that up, he wasn’t going to get anywhere fast with training Alpha.

Murder glared at Owen, but felt slightly amused at the surprised expression the man had on his face. No doubt he was used to the raptors who’d jump through hoops for him or whatever it was that they did for him. He wasn’t about to yield, nor was he going to be ‘trained’. To ensure his point had been made, he reached out and grabbed at the metal bucket, the claw of his middle finger hooked the bucket lip. With an open-mouthed snarl, he jerked his hand back and yanked the bucket out of Owen’s hands.

The bucket hit the cement floor with a god-awful clatter and Owen stood there. Now that it was in the ‘danger zone’, he wasn’t about to reach for it…Not with how moody Alpha seemed to be. He wasn’t entirely sure if the moodiness was due to the raptor’s injury or straight up belligerence. What he _did_ know, was that he wasn’t about to release him into the pen. If he did that, then Alpha would learn that by acting up, he’d get released. Instead, Owen simply turned around and walked into the breakroom. There, he browsed on his phone for a bit while he ignored the bellyaching the raptor made. He’d release Alpha once the temper tantrum was over with.

…Ten minutes later, the damned raptor was still bellowing and he’d taken to slamming the bucket against the gate. At this point, it was a battle of the wills: Alpha’s stubbornness to make a racket versus his stubbornness to wait out the temper tantrum. Owen knew that the sound had to be hell on the beast’s ears if it was bad on his. Finally, he stomped out of the breakroom and glared at Alpha. He was given a glare back, but the banging and bellowing stopped. When he did nothing, the calamity resumed with a great deal more fervor.

“FUCKING FINE!” He yelled over the noise and slammed his fist against the button to open the outer gate.

As soon as the gate had lifted enough, Murder dropped the bucket and darted out of the shelter to go eat his lunch. While the racket he’d made had given him a headache, he still felt incredibly smug over winning the little pissing match. With a content rumble, he started digging into his meal.

Feeling sour, Owen picked up the rats and dumped them outside before he returned home. Immediately, he downed Tylenol to help with his headache…Unfortunately, a second one showed up less than an hour later. Claire Dearing. He was far from in the mood to deal with her and he reluctantly stepped outside to see what she wanted.

“I was informed that you’re in charge of training the park’s newest asset, the Utahraptor.” Claire ignored Owen’s sour expression.

“That’s right.”

“How’s his training progressing?”

Owen sighed, “It’s…Progressing. You couldn’t have just called?”

“You wouldn’t have answered.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong, Owen thought irritatedly. “It’s slow because he’s wild and belligerent. If you’re wanting him on display quickly, it won’t happen.”

“It’ll take time for his enclosure to be finished…Several months, according to the construction foreman. His vet…” She paused to glance at her tablet, “Kaitlyn insisted on him having a large enclosure. He’s becoming a very expensive investment, already.”

“It’s always about the bottom line, isn’t it?” Owen scoffed then looked away for a moment to try and bite his tongue. “Alpha’ll get trained. It won’t be as impressive as my girls, but he’ll know some basic commands.”

“Good.” Claire turned to leave but paused when Owen said her name.

“…What stage is the construction in for his enclosure?”

“They’re still working clearing land for construction. He’ll have a ten-acre paddock.” Claire hesitated a moment before she brought something up on her tablet and handed it over to Owen. “The front area will be for public viewing and the building will had an adjunct for a shelter as well as staff needs. There will also be a walk way that leads to the middle of the paddock and then loops around back to the building. Kaitlyn insisted on it mimicking Isla Sorna as much as possible, which means heavy foliage and trees along the outside walls and towards the back of the paddock, grasslands in the middle and front. One corner at the back will have a waterfall and a pond.”

Owen took the tablet and flipped through the enclosure plans as Claire explained. It was a lot bigger than what Alpha was currently in, but likely smaller than whatever territory the raptor had on Sorna. Still, it was a hell of a lot better than what his girls were currently in. The mockups would give Alpha plenty of areas to hide in if he happened to get stressed from the guests. He handed the tablet back to her. “Yeah, it looks good.”

“Considering the size of the paddock, I hope you train him to respond to some sort of sound when it’s feeding time.”

Rather than waiting for a reply, Claire turned on her heel and walked back to her car. This left Owen to wonder if he’d be able to manage anything with the damned raptor. The more time he spent around Alpha, the more he questioned his skills as a raptor trainer.


	8. Not Quite Farewell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stories "Work Hazards" and "The Intelligence Test" take place between chapter 7 & 8 of this story.

The next three weeks proved to be both interesting and frustrating for Owen. To start things off, a worker had managed to get himself maimed by Alpha. The man had apparently seen Rowan spending time in the ‘danger zone’ and thought he could do the same. This resulted in his back getting absolutely ripped open and several organs punctured. Owen had just barely managed to get him away from Alpha.

Considering the extent of his injuries, it’d be amazing if Jacob survived and as it was, the man was currently being kept in a coma. Rowan, with his macabre sense of humor, had painted a red line and the words ‘Alpha Danger Zone’ in front of the gate. Then he’d added a sign that read ‘0 Days Since Last Alpha Incident’. Owen just hoped it’d keep others away from the gate.

Then, some scientist had insisted on him testing Alpha’s intelligence…Which mean Owen got to act completely shocked over the raptor solving some simple puzzle when he knew damn well that Alpha was able to do it. He supposed that he shouldn’t be frustrated with all the people who showed interest in Alpha. He was new, he was different, and there were plenty of differences between him and the girls. It made sense that people would want to catalog the differences, but it left him feeling frustrated when he was trying to hide how smart Alpha was.

To make matters worse, he had made absolutely zero headway in getting Alpha to respond to basic commands. Sure, it’d be very simple to just _tell_ the raptor what to do thanks to his apparently high level of intelligence…Despite the fact that Owen still wanted to deny it and found the implications incredibly concerning.

But that wasn’t why he was trying to teach the commands: Owen was worried about others finding out about said intelligence. Hoskins would have a fucking field day and there was no telling what other people higher up in the chain of command would do. Whatever the hell Alpha was…He needed to be protected from those who’d exploit him. And Christ were there plenty of people who’d do that.

Even explaining to Alpha on what he was doing hadn’t helped. He assumed the raptor understood, but when he tried to run through some basic commands, he was met with hostility. Assuming Alpha didn’t humor him for a bit before spitting chewed up rat at him. It was painfully obvious that the raptor had zero respect for him, something that had changed at he’d gotten healthier.

It didn’t help that he was having to split is attention between his girls and Alpha. While the pack was his main focus, he still needed to devote time to the Utahraptor. Frustratingly enough, it was becoming harder and harder to do so. Alpha required a lot more time than what he had available. If he tried to give both pens the attention they needed, he ended up suffering for it…And if he tried to take time for himself, it usually ended up being Alpha who got the short end of things. He couldn’t keep this up forever.

And then there was the massive headache known as Rowan who insisted on breaking every single rule and then some. How he hadn’t been killed was absolutely beyond Owen considering how he often sat with his back to the shelter gate and hand fed Alpha. It was rare for him to show up and _not_ find the man hanging around the pen. If anything, Alpha actually seemed to like the man and it had become increasingly clear to Owen that the two were starting to form a semblance of a bond. Meanwhile, anything Owen had formed with Alpha had completely dried up and fallen apart.

He knew he needed help with the raptor, but he wasn’t sure how much Rowan knew and if he could be trusted or not. The man was an absolute wildcard and didn’t seem to play well with authority. Likely, that was why the two seemed to tolerate each other. Still, Rowan had insinuated quite a few times that he knew how intelligent Alpha was. It was a massive gamble, as far as Owen was concerned, to bring the other man into the loop…But he’d been taking gambles from day one when it came to the raptor.

After talking the idea over with Kaitlyn, he finally approached Rowan one afternoon while the man was feeding Alpha some onion rings. “Rowan, can we talk a moment?”

Rowan rolled his eyes, “Time for the daily bitch out session, huh?”

“No, it’s not. Kaitlyn and I talked things over a bit. Since Alpha seems to like you so much and isn’t a fan of change, we…” Owen sighed, “We’d like you to be part of the care team. Assuming you’re able to keep quiet about his di–“

“Yeah. I know he’s weird. Not interested in telling anyone, either.” Rowan glanced at Alpha who was watching them intently, then he looked back to Owen. “So, what’s it involve and does it mean you’ll stop riding my ass about things?”

“Helping with his care, mostly. I have my own raptors and…I honestly don’t have the time he needs. I would also say helping with his training, but I’ve hit the point that I don’t think it’s possible.” Owen paused a moment before he continued, “If you keep doing stupid things around him, yeah, I’ll keep bitching at you.”

“Well, damn. At least get some lube.” Rowan quipped as he passed Alpha another onion ring. “I’m not interested in friction.”

Owen chose to ignore the blatantly sexual comment, “I’m being serious. You’re going to end up getting yourself killed.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been in danger and I doubt it’ll be the last. It’s sort of a given in my…Former line of work.”

“So, do you want the job or not?”

“Yeah, I’ll take it. Doubt any sort of training will happen, though. If he does anything, it’s ‘cause he wants to.” Rowan commented as he passed the final onion ring to Alpha. “He likes me ‘cause I bring him food. Like I told you a couple weeks ago: as long as he considers you useful, you’re not in danger. Pretty sure he’s being pissy towards you because you’re trying to make him do things.”

“I figured that out when he started spitting rat guts on me.” Owen frowned when Rowan lightly rubbed Alpha’s nose. “When did he start letting you do that?”

“I’unno. Couple days ago? I usually end up spending my lunch here everyday and I always bring him something.” Rowan shrugged and watched the raptor wander out of the shelter.

“Does he let you touch his head?”

“Hell no. Tried that and got snarled at.” Rowan started picking up his trash. “I don’t really go out of my way to try and touch him. He seems kinda standoffish. If he acts like he wants me to, I will. He pretty much runs the show and I’m under no illusion that I can get him to do anything he doesn’t want to.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. Anyway, what’s your number? Kaitlyn likes to keep everyone up-to-date.”

Rowan rattled off his number and then checked his phone when Owen texted him. “Got it…So how’s this supposed to work? Do I just do my thing and report to you two or what?”

“Kaitlyn really managed everything. We’re just the hired help, I guess. She’ll add you to Alpha’s file and you’ll see what she has planned for him. Otherwise?” Owen shrugged, “It’s just letting each other know about any major issues.”

“Aight. Yeah. I can do that.” Rowan leaned over and hit the button to close the outer gate. “Anyway. I need to get to work with cleaning the shelter. He’s been nasty towards anyone cleaning the shelter but me…Probably because I give him extra bedding.”

Owen snorted loudly. “No wonder he likes you. Give him food and you spoil the hell out of him.”

“Hey, if it works, it works. Keeps him happy and it keeps me alive.”

It was well after midnight when Rowan returned to the shelter. There, he was given a slight glare as he sat down against the bars. “Hey. Sorry I’m late. Got access to your file. There isn’t anything interesting besides all the health stuff they’ve been doing. They don’t know what you are, I don’t think. Hell, there’s nothing about you being ‘unusually’ smart, either. So, I’m guessing all that shit is just staying between Owen and Kaitlyn.”

Behind him, he heard the gut twisting sound of joints popping and cracking. Then the sound of something sitting down behind him. After a moment, Rowan glanced over his shoulder at the tangled mess of dark hair that belonged to the ‘human’ behind him. “So…What’cha want for tomorrow?”

There was a long moment of silence before a voice rough from disuse answered, “Pizza?”

“I’unno, if I can get’cha that, Murder. Might be hard to sneak in. What about a cheeseburger with bacon?”

“Yes. Chicken.”

“So…Bacon cheeseburger with fried chicken?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I can get that for you.”


End file.
